The province has given the go-ahead for yard sales on P.E.I. as long as public safety guidelines are followed.

Recommendations include cleaning tables several times a day, encouraging customers to view items without touching them and cleaning and disinfecting all items.

However, organizers of the annual 70-Mile Yard Sale have decided it will not be going ahead this year.

A post on the Wood Islands Development Corporation's website said the decision was based purely on the uncertainty of how things will progress this summer with the pandemic and the amount of time and effort that goes into planning and organizing the event.

Anyone who has paid in advance for this year will be contacted and given options for making the payment count for next year, or for a refund.

Other yard sales are going ahead though. Tracey Livingstone lives in Summerside and said she attended five yard sales on Saturday and things looked different than in previous years.

"Some of them had arrows. A lot of people were being cautious about staying apart from each other, some people sitting in their cars and waiting for other people to leave before they went in," she said.

Livingstone said customers at yard sales spoke among themselves about the importance of physical distancing.

"Personally I walked around with my hands behind my back clasped just to remind myself not to touch," she said. "The only thing I touched I bought."

She said the sale was also handled differently. The man who sold her the plant stand stood two metres back.

"I told him I wanted to move it to make sure that it was not rickety," she said, as she wanted to check the sturdiness herself.

Livingstone said she handed over a $10 bill at a safe distance.

Others are still on the fence over whether they'll attend or host a yard sale this year. Before COVID-19 hit the province, Becky Pineau, who lives in Charlottetown, said she and her family were planning to put together a huge yard sale. With the new health restrictions in place, Pineau posted on Facebook to see if there was an appetite for yard sales before she started getting to work on implementing provincial recommendations.

"I was just trying to wonder if there was an interest before I went through all the trouble or sanitizing everything and putting markers out and getting sanitizer," she said. "It is a lot of extra work to put on a yard sale now and I didn't want to waste my Saturday if no one was interested in coming."

She said cleaning tables and items would take time and if you don't have it all done by 7 a.m. you miss "the hardcore yard salers."

"It just seems like a lot of work for the money that we would make," she said.

Pineau said she doesn't think she will bother to host one this year. She has moved to selling items online through sites like Facebook.

"I've sold a lot of stuff," she said. "I have been making the arrangements of setting things on the deck and people e-transfer or there is a pencil case they can put money in."

Pineau said she can make about $30 to $40 a day.

However, Pineau said she thinks the rules set out by the province around yard sales "are well thought out."

"They seem to have it laid out pretty good and I would feel safe going to a yard sale if someone was following all those precautions," she said.

Livingstone also hosts yard sales and she said if she sets one up she will follow the guidelines issued by the province, however it may be hard to offer alternatives to cash, like a machine to read debit cards.

"It would be different if it was your income all summer then you could go out and invest in a piece of equipment or whatever you needed to do that. But for me it wouldn't be worth the investment," she said.

Livingstone has also posted used items online and takes e-transfers as an alternative to hosting a yard sale.

But e-transfers don't work for small purchases.

"If it is a toonie, like you know, something for a dollar or 50 cents something like that. Even an email transfer it would have to be anything above $5 before I take an email transfer for it," she said.