Skip to main content

Could you make an extra $4,200?

Gumtree did a survey to find out how much unwanted stuff Australians have. The answer was $4,200 of per household. That's a lot of money to be tied up in items that we don't even want.


Across Australia this adds up to 34 billion dollars worth of unwanted stuff. $34,000,000,000! That's a lot of stuff just sitting around.

It's probably even more

The survey said the average household has 25 unwanted items. So far my wife and I have sold more than 300* items, with another 60 already listed and more items still to be added. Surely 25 items per household is just the tip of the iceberg.

What do you think?

How many unwanted items do you have at your place? Do you reckon it would be more that 25?

People are cashing in

It's estimated that 100 million items were sold second-hand last year. Millenials are leading the way making almost $2000 per person.


In the last year 56% of Aussies have sold something second hand, including 1.3 million people making their first online sale.

Tips for making thousands

If you'd like to turn some of your unwanted possessions into money, you might like my free ebook Less Clutter More Cash. It's a collection of tips that we've learnt in the process of selling more than 300 of our unwanted items. Hopefully it can help you too.

PS. See my related post 4 Reasons to sell unwanted items

*Update: We've now sold 557 items. So the 25 per household seems to be quite a conservative estimate.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Big motivator for small living

It's been a while between posts here - mainly because we've been moving house. It's been a real motivator for downsizing. Packing each and every item we owned, really makes me wish there were fewer of them. Moving everything from the old apartment to the new one made me envious of those people who live in a "tiny house on wheels". For them moving house simply means towing it to a new location. No packing required. The whole process has reaffirmed our commitment to owning less stuff. So we're going to be intentional about downsizing. It will be an ongoing activity. My environmental heart couldn't stomach a spontaneous dumping of things into the garbage, but it's also more fun this way. Selling things online brings in some handy pocket money. Giving items away is also a great community activity, whether it is to friends and family, to charity or to people in the neighbourhood. I'm looking forward to it as a lifestyle rather than a task to do....

Top 5 articles of 2019

As we wrap up 2019, here are the most-read posts here on But Wait There's Less . 5. Books. Do we need them anymore? Why do we keep books? To read them again? How many do we ever read a second time? I worked it out .For me not many. This lead to a second post on my technique for streamlining my book collection . 4. Living in a converted barn. This was something my wife and I tried on a trip away this year. Check out the pictures . I still reckon it could be possible long-term. We really don't need as much space as we have. 3. What's your retirement age? It's not 67. At least it doesn't have to be. If we spend less, compulsory work can become optional at a very early age . It could even be in your 30s. 2. The automatic guest room On the same trip as number 4, we stayed with a friend who (with some clever furniture ) converts her living room into another bedroom. It's a clever way to be able to have guests, but without paying a heap of money for a bigge...

Colour me happy

One of the great things about reducing possessions is thing called 'helper's high' . It's that fuzzy feeling you get from helping someone else out. I got one recently by helping an old man lift heavy groceries into his car boot when he was struggling. But this is not about that. I was about to put some watercolour paints online for anyone who wanted them. Then I remembered a local community group where people do art therapy. I gave the paints to a contact who passed them on to the group. The next day my contact called me to say how much they were appreciated. One of the participants wanted to do some watercolour painting, but couldn't afford the paints. When my contact walked in with free paints the participant was overjoyed to be able to do her art. As far as 'helper's highs' go, this was a slightly removed one - I never met the actual person I helped. But still it was a buzz.