I’m talking about selling my stuff.
Some stuff that I don’t want any more goes right in the trash. Some stuff I can find a good home for and happily give away. Some stuff is too worn or tired to sell, so I give it to EcoThrift, my local secondhand store.
But some stuff is in great shape, and I often believe it is still valuable. Coupled with the fact that I am trying to make and save money to slay my debt, it would seem like a win-win to sell these valuable items.
And I have sold some things, and always for a good price, because my goal is to get rid of this stuff, and a happy byproduct is somebody else getting a deal. I sold four metal music stands on Facebook Marketplace, a reading program on ebay, and a bunch of books and games and stuff on Amazon Marketplace.
But other things—I take photos of them, I post them on multiple platforms, I answer questions that potential buyers have about the items—and they don’t sell.
I have not been able to discern a pattern regarding what sells and what doesn’t. It all seems pretty random. Things that I thought would probably not move have sold immediately, while things that I’ve thought would fly off the shelf, so to speak, are still sitting in my family room, like forlorn residents of Rudolph’s Island of Misfit Toys.
My point? Selling your stuff requires a lot of curation and, in many cases, at least in my limited experience, ends up being a real pain in the ass. My friend Maria, who is also clearing out decades of stuff from her own house, says this process has to hurt some.
And it does. It’s all about the valuation of one’s time and energy.
The music stands sold quickly and easily, as did the reading program. Other things—well, someone on Facebook Marketplace messages me, saying they would like to buy something I’m selling, we set something up, then they vanish and I never hear from them again. Or scheduling the rendezvous for someone to pick up and buy an item can become very complicated. Or some people want to nickel and dime you to death. Or somebody wants to see a lot more pictures of a given something, and then they don’t buy it. Which is fair, but it means I just spent a lot more time not selling a thing.
There’s also this issue: Once I’ve decided I don’t want you in my house any more—you book or you bicycle or you math program or you organic cotton flannel fabric—I still have to store you until someone buys you if that’s my chosen route. And really, I just don’t want to see you any more. So inventory storage also poses a challenge, and can leave a kind of heavy emotional residue.
It sounds so good in theory. Turn those items you no longer want into cash! Much more gnarly in practice.