Plan Your Perfect

Inspiration

Every summer, my family spent hours stressing over garage sale prep—scrambling to price items, draft social posts, and track payments. I saw neighbors struggle too: mispriced goods, forgotten promotion, no plan for unsold items. I wanted to build a tool that stripped away the chaos, making garage sales simple for anyone, no tech expertise required.

What it does

Garage Sale Organizer is a lightweight web app that handles every step of garage sale planning: upload item photos for AI price suggestions, set sale schedules with weather reminders, copy pre-written social media captions, toggle payment methods, and find local donation centers for unsold goods—all saved locally, no login needed.

How we built it

We started with core user needs (inventory, scheduling, promotion) and mapped the dashboard layout. We used React for the UI, TensorFlow.js for image/price analysis, and LocalStorage to persist data across sessions. We prioritized mobile responsiveness—most users plan sales on their phones—and kept the design clean with terracotta/sage green tones for a warm, approachable feel.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest hurdle was refining the AI price suggestion logic: blurry photos led to inaccurate item classification, so we added error handling and manual price overrides. We also struggled with real-time schedule sync to promo text—we fixed it by tying caption generation to schedule updates, preserving user edits.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built a fully functional tool that’s fast (AI suggestions in <3 seconds) and intuitive—beta testers (local sellers) said it cut their prep time by 50%. We also nailed responsive design: it works seamlessly on phones, tablets, and desktops, no compromises.

What we learned

We learned to prioritize user edge cases (e.g., past sale dates, missing item photos) over "perfect" features. We also realized how critical local persistence is—users hate logins, so LocalStorage was a game-changer for adoption.

What's next for this project

We want to add lightweight weather API integration (for real-time sale day alerts), inventory sorting by category, and a simple PDF export for donation tax notes. We also plan to expand donation center data to cover more rural areas, making the tool accessible to more sellers.

Built With

• fontawesome
• localstorage
• tensorflow.js