Due to our  success on eBay recently you may have noticed that several of my blogs mention a tip or two about selling your clutter this way. I had an interesting question from Carmen which raised a subject I thought was worth  mentioning.

Carmen asked:- “Do you have any advice on shipping? The part I stress the most about is being able to find packaging (e.g. boxes) for the stuff I want to sell on eBay. Consequently, I haven’t sold much.”

What I say to this is       RECYCLE     RECYCLE     RECYCLE

Buy the time you have sold the item on eBay you have already paid insertion fees and possibly PayPal fees so you don’t want to have to part with any more of your hard earned profit on having to buy packaging.

I work in retail, selling furniture and decor accessories so I have access to an endless supple of boxes and packaging supplies that would otherwise end up in the recycling. So I would suggest go to a retail outlet near where you live and just ask if they would save you some boxes in various sizes. if you live in America and there is a Joanns craft store near you they are a perfect target as they get one shipment a week from the main warehouse find out what day that shipment comes in and you will have hundreds of boxes to choose from every week. I alter boxes to fit my needs and use old gift wrap (in side out) to wrap them in.

We also save boxes from items we buy if we think they will come in handy for this purpose although I wouldn’t encourage doing this too much as that will just make more clutter around your house. Where feasible we flatten the boxes so they take up minimal room.

If all else fails you might just have to visit the post office or a packaging store to find a box to suit your needs.

ITEM 138 OF 365 LESS THINGS

This ski mask made $56.00 on eBay

Today I have been organizing some more items to put on eBay so I thought I would share with you what I do to prepare for this.

1. Decide what I want to sell
2. Check other completed auctions on eBay to see how similar products are performing.
3. Take photos of the items I am selling and download them to my computer- sometimes if it is a like new item I may just download a photo from the Internet or off another same item already selling on eBay.
4. If sizes or measurement are relevant I make a note of those while I am in the photo taking process.
5. I also make a note of any imperfection or other details I may need to mention when filling out the description section of the listing form. (colour, material, capacity, brand name, model info etc). To save having to use too much imagination you can also download descriptions from supplier web sites and other similar eBay auctions. Cutting and pasting is easier than typing.
6. I then decide what starting price I feel is appropriate and whether I want to use the auction format, Buy it now or both.
7. Once I am satisfied that I have all the details I need I log into eBay and start listing my items.
8. I usually double check that all the details are correct before hitting the accept button ei. location details, item description, price, PayPal details, payment address…
9. For large items I usually opt for Local Pick Up Only because I don’t want the hassle of estimating or arranging delivery of large items

I have to admit that once the auction is under way I do tend to obsess over how it is doing and go back to check several times a day but that is half the fun of using eBay in the first place.

ITEM 134 of 365 LESS THINGS

While we are on the subject of eBay here is another of my ski gear items this one sold for $22.50

Today I am giving you a tally of what has been thrown away, what has been given away and what has been sold on eBay since the beginning of my new years resolution of 365 less things. There is an upside and a downside to this count though.

The upside is that most of the items I have uncluttered from my home have either been donated to charity, given to friends or sold on eBay. As I have mentioned before the advantage to this is that they have gone to  new homes where they have the chance of being used to their true potential.

The downside is that the reason behind the fact that there has been so little thrown away is because we had a home full of clutter that had not been used to it’s full potential. Which means we should probably not have wasted our money on them in the first place.  I console myself  that some of the items were things my children had needed but grew out of and others were items that had become un-necessary due to the latest change of location but still there must be many things that were just a waste.

I am reasonably happy though that I didn’t have a home full of garbage and that the items that have been thrown away so far wouldn’t even fill a wheely bin.

This is the tally so far

• 21   have been thrown away
• 90  have been donated or given away
• 21   have been sold on eBay at the value of $553.25

In future I will keep a running tally of this break down under the heading Give away – Throw away – Sell under the Pages List in the right side collumn of my blog.

ITEM 132 OF 365 LESS THINGS

Some more scrapbook magazines I tried to sell two of these on eBay without success they have all been donated to charity

There is a lot of focus on the negative stuff in our lives when we discuss clutter and decluttering so today I thought for once I might focus on a few items in our household that have been in our lives for many years and have been in use all that time (or at least all the time that they haven’t been in storage due to location choices)

1. A White Plastic Laundry Hamper – in my bathroom I think has been in use (off and on) for 23 years.
2. My Camphor Wood Chest -  has stored different items for me since I was a teenager – I plan to reduce enough clutter in our home so that I won’t need it anymore.
3. Two Cast Iron Frying Pans – my mother bought for me just before I was married. She bought a set of frying pans and saucepans for $12 at a garage sale. I intended to replace them with some thing “better” when I was more financial. I eventually sold the saucepans at my own garage sale for $12 and donated one frying pan because it didn’t work well on the new ceramic hotplates in our current home but I still own two pans as they have worked so well for all this time.
4. Fridge – I know every household uses its fridge on a constant basis but mine has served me particularly well as I have owned the same one for 23 years. I has been in and out of storage over that time but unlike many other electrical items it has managed to survive long periods of non-use without seizing up on me.
5. Whip Cream Maker – I bought this at a garage sale about 12 years ago and it is often put into service.
6. Fiskars Rotary Trimmer – you might wonder how often one would need one of these but I have used mine on a very regular basis for the last ten years and I imagine will do so for many years to come.
7. Ironing Board – Like the fridge and the laundry hamper the ironing board has been around for 23 years of marriage. It did have a spell in storage for 7 years though.
8. A Corel Dinner Set – which has been in constant service for 23 years.
9. Gold Coffee Mug – that I had before I graduated to a proper china tea cup and saucer at my grandmothers when I was a child. I still use this regularly.
10. My husband’s old stereo system – although we have sold it off on eBay recently it deserves a mention because it served him well for several years before we were married then right up to 2000 when we moved to America.

It is very satisfying to see the items mentioned above and know that we have used them to their potential and may still get many useful years out of them yet.

ITEM 131 OF 365 LESS THINGS

These Scott ski goggles fetched $37.00 from my eBay sales.

Think about it for a minute, all the stuff in your home that you thought you needed at one point or another and never used to its potential (AKA Clutter)  is likely to become landfill prematurely  if you don’t pass it on now to a good home where it will no doubt at least fulfill another person’s needs for a period of time before either being used to it’s true potential or get passed on again until it does.

I was so please with all my eBay sales last week not only because they put a little bit of cash back into my pocket but also the items I sold are now being used by someone else. There are two benefits to this 1.) the items are not going to waste 2.) the people who bought them are not contributing to landfill or production pollution by having to buy these items new.

While reading through the posts at Sanity In Simplicity I came across a link to a thought provoking video (The Story of Stuff) which is worth a look if you want to scare yourself into recycling what you no longer use and reducing what you buy in the future.

ITEM 130 OF 365 LESS THINGS

I received $30.00 for these three items on eBay, not my best sale but they have now gone to a new home where they will be reused and that is the most rewarding result of this exercise.

Previously I mentioned how a change of  location and or lifestyle can have an impact on the necessity for certain  items around your home. Our move from Seattle in the USA back to Australia has rendered our ski gear mostly useless to us as we are now 700km from the closest ski fields. Sure we might like to take a winter holiday to the snow some time but in Australia you can hire both ski clothes and equipment should that ever happen. We also have some items that no longer fit our children anyway. So I decided to sell it all on eBay.

Now I did my homework first and checked similar completed auctions on eBay to see how this type of product was selling and it didn’t look that great but I figured I would give it a shot anyway and take what I could get. The goggles in particular weren’t performing very well.

I am pleased to be able to say my auctions have gone very well. Everything I put up for auction sold and now there is a lovely big space in one of the cupboards in our house. The combined starting price for my auctions was $108.00 and the total amount that I fetched was $312.00, “got to be happy with that”. Those 4 pair of goggles I mentioned brought in $147.87 of the total.

Altogether I sold…

• 1 adult jacket
• 3 kids jackets
• 4 kids pants
• 2 pair of kids gloves
• 4 pair of goggles (2 kids 2 adults)

I haven’t had any feed back yet but I hope the buyers will all happy with their purchases.

ITEMS 127 OF 365 LESS THINGS

I have decided to list each combined auction sale as one item because otherwise I will be boring you with ski gear for the next two weeks as it is it will take ten days to get through it all. These two items sold for a grand total of $37.50.

I finally got all the snow clothing out of the cupboard on the weekend (one of those jobs I have been avoiding) and put it all on eBay.  All that is except the pair of men’s pants that had a hole in the leg and a ripped lining – I don’t know why I hadn’t already tossed them out- and 2 pair of goggles that the foam fining had perished while stuck in the cupboard unused.

The auctions are going well 5 out of 10 things already have bids on and anything that doesn’t sell will be going to the thrift shop.

While writing this I realised that I forgot to put the other pairs of goggles on eBay so I had better take care of that shortly. I think there may be another jacket in my son’s closet as well so I have better check that out.

That certainly freed up some room in one cupboard.

I don’t know why I had been avoiding this job for so long but it is a good thing I decided to do it now because Australia is about to move into winter and the ski season will be starting soon so now is the perfect time to put ski gear on eBay. That is a good tip to remember – Consider the seasons when selling on eBay some things will sell better at certain times of the year.

ITEM 117 OF 365 LESS THINGS

These are the pants I had to toss because they were torn.

I once came across and article in a scrapbook magazine with a survey to determine whether the reader was a scrapbooker or a collector of scrapbook supplies. This may seem amusing to some but there is an fine edge that one can easily slip over when at the height of a crafting obsession.

This  applies to all crafts and hobbies, woodworking, quilting, knitting, beading, model making… the list goes on.  So beware and try to put a limit on the amount of supplies you allow yourself to amass. It is very easy to get carried away.

Tastes change, trends change and life changes and one day you may get board with the current hobby, become unable to continue the craft for physical reasons or change your lifestyle and be unable to accommodate your hobby. Then you are left with a huge collection of supplies to get rid of and the guilt trip that goes along with that because of the amount of  money you have spent on something you no longer obsess over.

For Example, I used to do a lot of scrapbooking and papercrafting and although I still use my supplies I don’t use them nearly as much as I once did and they take up a lot of  space in my craft room and I am now more interested in beaded jewellery making.

I am slowly using up my supplies but if you think you won’t, don’t despair, try selling them on eBay, or to a friend who still enjoys the hobby or there is sure to be a craft group around who would be happy to take them off you hands.

Today’s item is a old set of drill bits that belonged to my husband’s grandfather. He sold them on eBay to someone who will get new joy out of them I hope.

On January 15th my give-away for the day was wedding invitations that I made for a friend’s daughter’s wedding. My husband said that was a cop out and not really purging anything yet I thought this was one of my best donations yet. You see I have a lot of papercrafting items such as tools, cardstock , paper, adhesive, embelishments…. but I really haven’t been doing a lot of papercrafting lately.

I have previously made the invitations for the engagement party and when I was asked to do the wedding invitations I thought what a great oportunity to contribute to their special event and purge some of the supplies I had sitting useless in cupboards and drawers.

This generous offer of time, effort and supplies made me feel good not only because of the purge but because I have saved the couple quite a few dollars as well and enjoyed the creative outlet.

Don’t forget the object of this exercise of 365 less things. The contribution doesn’t have to be big it just has to be everyday to make a difference.

Today’s object was another item we sold on eBay.

A couple of days ago I added my bicycle to the things that are to go to charity. I have owned a bike since I was about nine years old. I rode a bike to school almost every day from that age. I bought my first new bike when I was about sixteen and when I started working for my parents’ business at the age of nineteen I used the bike to deliver the monthly accounts.

The use of the bicycle got less and less once I was married and had children but it has been one of those thing that I have always owned and relied on during a long period of my life. I have never not owned one since the age of nine. The one I am giving away has been ridden so few times in the ten years I have owned it that the little rubber spiky bits haven’t worn off the tyres.

It took a long time to decide I really wasn’t going to get the use out of it that I hoped. I would have like to ride it to work but then I would have needed to shower once I got there and there is no shower facility at my work. I took it out for one last test ride just to be sure and decided I really didn’t enjoy it and it was time to let go.

My point is the just because you have always owned a particular thing doesn’t mean you have to have one for the rest of your life. The age old rule applies if you haven’t used it in the last twleve months then you probably aren’t ever going to. Give it to someone who will.

Today’s item is a bench grinder that also hasn’t been used in years. It sold on eBay for $20.00, a good deal for the buyer.