Sunday, February 7, 2010

More about stuff...

We have been ridding ourselves of stuff for some three months now and it is finally starting to look like it.  For the last three months we have been throwing stuff away every Thursday.  You see on Thursdays is our trash day and before I put the trash out to the curb I look around the house for something to fill up the remaining space.  This has worked really well because it has allowed us to prioritize what is trash and what isn't. 

Now understand the stuff I am throwing away is truly trash and not something useful or recyclable.   But by ridding ourselves of this trash piecemeal like this there is this slow ridding of items such as papers, magazines, rags, wood scraps etc. that have collected over the last 15 years we have lived in this house.  By tossing all of the true garbage it started to reveal items that were not garbage but that we really hadn't used in years and were just taking up space.  This is where Craigslist came in handy.  So every now and then I identify several items to photograph and place an ad on Craigslist. I have sold many items and still have many for sale.  The trick to selling on Craigslist I have learned is to search for similar items on Craiglist and price below anything comparable.  Then when someone searches for that particular item yours will be the first one they call about.  Granted I won't make as much money but my goal isn't to make money it is to get rid of stuff (well more money would be nice but...).  The money we do make will be used later to buy neat stuff for our RV.  After all we will need some new stuff to replace all of our old stuff ;-).

I have also set up an Ebay account but have noticed there are a lot of fees associated with selling one Ebay.  However, I will take the items I can't sell on Craigslist and see if they are being sold on Ebay and if so I will place ads there as well.  Then the last part of selling my stuff will take place at local garage sales and consignment stores.  We aren't there yet but then that will be another story...

2 comments:

  1. Hi there, Your plans sound great and you both sound very similar to us in personality, goals and partnership balance. One thing we learned the hard way during our first winter of fulltiming is our heads would get very cold due to the bed being in bedroom slideout. We tried packing the window with foam (to act as insulation), wearing ski caps to bed. Our final solution was to sleep with our feet at the head of the bed. Just something to think about before you buy your new home.

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  2. Thanks for the tip Mike and Kathy - so what rig did you end up with?

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