As president of the Countrywood Neighborhood Association, Donna McCraw wants the Cordova subdivision’s annual yard sale on Sept.
18-19 to be a big event. But not so big that it endangers residents and their homes. With the yard sale just a month away, McCraw and the neighborhood association are hard at work on a game plan that will make the event safer and more neighborhood-friendly. “It’s great that the sale draws a lot of people to the neighborhood,” McCraw said. “But we’ve had a lot of problems in the past with traffic, parking and crime. We want to do a better job of planning this year to try and avoid some of that.” The Countrywood yard sale has been drawing thousands of people from across the Mid-South area for two decades. But McCraw said in recent years, the event has gotten a little out of hand. The sale, which started as a way for residents to clean out their garages each fall, has grown to include food vendors and companies selling truckloads of new merchandise. This year, food vendors will be grouped into an area predetermined by the neighborhood association and residents could be fined by county code enforcement officers for renting their yards to companies selling new items.
“We’ve looked at the Shelby County codes governing yard sales and our interpretation of those codes is that yard sales aren’t supposed to include new items,” said Lonnie Epperson, another Countrywood resident who’s working with the association to formulate the yard sale game plan. “We’re still waiting for confirmation on that … but that certainly seems to be the rule.”