This article is about the Proxi admin app at app.proxi.co.
A community garage sale, neighborhood yard sale, block-wide rummage sale, citywide sale weekend — whatever your town calls it, the hard part is the same every year. Somebody makes a list of addresses, it goes out as a PDF or a Facebook post, three houses drop out, two more join the morning of, and shoppers drive around with a printout that's already wrong.
A map fixes the wrong-list problem, and more importantly it lets the households add themselves. We'll build one for a made-up "Cedar Hollow Neighborhood Sale" running one Saturday in May — about 40 houses, organized by one volunteer who does not want 40 emails.
1. Create the Map
From the Maps page, make a new map and name it for the year — "Cedar Hollow Neighborhood Sale 2026." Putting the year in the name matters here; you'll want last year's sitting alongside it rather than overwritten.
Set the starting view to your neighborhood, zoomed in enough that a shopper opening the link sees streets and house-level detail rather than the whole county. That's in the map editor under your map's starting view.
2. Decide What Each House Should Tell Shoppers
Resist the urge to ask ten questions. Every extra field costs you sign-ups, and the volunteer running this has no appetite for chasing people. Four earn their place:
What they're selling — a category field with checkboxes: Kids & baby, Furniture, Tools & garage, Clothing, Books & media, Sports & outdoor, Antiques & collectibles, Household. This is the single most useful thing on the map, because shoppers hunting for a crib will drive right past a table of paperbacks.
Hours — not everyone runs the full day. Some start at 7am and are done by 11.
Cash only? — a simple yes/no. Shoppers plan their stop at the ATM around it.
A photo or two — optional, and the thing that most reliably gets someone to drive over.
Add these under Fields in your collection. For the category field, use the multi-select type so a household can tick more than one. See Setting Up Categories, Fields, and Labels.
3. Let Households Add Themselves
This is the whole point, and it's one switch. On your collection page, click Public submissions:
Switch submissions on and keep Require approval before publishing on. You want a look at each one — mostly to catch an address typo, occasionally to catch someone from three neighborhoods over.
Click Edit Form. Set the public title to something a neighbor would actually respond to: "Add your sale to the Cedar Hollow map." Description: "Selling this Saturday? Put your house on the map so shoppers can find you — takes a minute."
Keep the fields to address, what they're selling, hours, cash-only, and photos. That's it.
Click Share for the public link and an embed code. The link is what you post; the embed goes on the neighborhood association page if you have one.
Post it where the neighborhood already talks — the Facebook group, Nextdoor, the HOA email, and a sign at the entrance with a QR code. Those four do nearly all of it. See Collecting Places From Your Community.
As entries arrive, the Review button on your collection wears a badge. Glance at each and hit Approve — it's on the map straight away, which is exactly the drip-feed of activity that keeps people re-sharing the link.
4. Make Saturday Morning Easy
Turn on the category filter so shoppers can tap "Kids & baby" and see only those houses. On a sale weekend this is the feature people actually use.
Switch on numbered markers if you're printing anything — a numbered map plus a numbered list is what people carry in the car. See Showing Numbers on Your Map's Markers and Printing Your Map.
Let visitors save places. Someone planning their route the night before will star six houses and drive between them. See Choosing What Visitors Can Do on Your Map.
5. Handle the Day-Of Changes
Two things always happen. Someone sells out by 10am and wants off the map, and someone decides at 8am to join.
For dropouts, open the place and switch off Active on this map — the pin disappears, the entry stays, and next year they're one click from being back. For late joiners, the form is still open; approve them from your phone and they're live in seconds. This is the part a printed list simply cannot do, and it's worth saying so when you promote the map.
6. Next Year
Here's where a little thought now saves you an afternoon later.
Houses belong in the collection. Participants churn every year, and a clean slate each spring is what you want. Duplicate this year's map, clear the places, reopen the form. See Duplicating and Deleting Maps.
Businesses, if any, are worth making listings. If your sale weekend includes the hardware store running a sidewalk special, or a coffee cart, or a sponsor — those are the same every year. Add them as listings and pull them into the collection, and their hours, phone, and photos come along on their own. Next May you're not retyping them.
Keeping everything in the collection is fine too. If it's purely residents' houses, that's genuinely the simpler choice and nothing is lost. The listings route only pays off for the participants who repeat.
If you do go the listings route with a handful of businesses, switch on Let owners claim their listing — the coffee cart can then fix its own hours next year without going through you. See Let Owners Claim Their Own Listing and Listings vs. Collections.
Beyond the Map: Running a Good Neighborhood Sale
Pick the date early and tell people twice. Late April through early June, and September, are the traditional windows — good weather and people are in a clearing-out mood. Announce it about six weeks ahead so households have time to actually sort through the garage, then again the week of.
One weekend beats one day. Saturday plus Sunday morning roughly doubles shopper traffic without doubling anyone's effort, and it gives rained-out households a second chance.
Check whether you need a permit. Plenty of towns require one for yard sales, or cap how many a household can hold per year — and some waive the fee for an organized community-wide sale. A five-minute call to the city clerk before you promote it is worth it.
Signage still matters. The map gets people to the neighborhood; a bright sign gets them to the driveway. Ask households to put one out, and put a couple of larger ones at the entrances with the map's QR code. Agree to take them all down Sunday evening — nothing sours a neighborhood on next year's sale like signs still up in July.
Suggest people price things beforehand. Unpriced tables mean the seller haggles all morning instead of enjoying it. A note in your sign-up confirmation is enough.
Plan the leftovers. Line up a charity pickup for late Sunday and tell everyone in advance. Households sell more freely when they know they aren't hauling the rest back inside, and it's the single most appreciated thing an organizer can arrange.
Parking and pedestrians. On a busy sale weekend the streets fill with slow cars and people crossing mid-block. If your neighborhood has a natural overflow lot, name it on the map as a place — shoppers will use it.
For the community side of this — resident-nominated maps generally — see Step by Step: Community Builder Maps. And if your sale grows into a full downtown event, the festival guide covers vendors, sponsors, and printed handouts: Step by Step: Building a Festival Map.