A grand in the hand

One of the tangible benefits of downsizing is the money from selling the things you no longer want/need.

We've just hit $1,000 - yippee!

I made a note of each item we sold. Only 4 of them were over $30. So it's not like we had big valuable items. It's just lots of medium and small things. Some for as little as $1. We weren't using them, so to us they were just taking up space. But to someone else they were valuable items.

We did a garage sale early on. It took up about a day, including preparation, and we made $24. It's a nice way to meet a few neighbours, but we didn't do much downsizing. That's when we went online.

We have a bunch of stuff listed on gumtree. It's like an ongoing garage sale but much less work. People can browse at any time of the day or night. All we do is chat online if they're interested - and collect the cash when they come by. (Which has also saved a few trips to the ATM).

It's a quadruple win. Less clutter. Cash in the hand. Free removal. Nothing goes to landfill.

Did I mention one thousand dollars?

PS. For the statistically-minded, we had 74 items. Take out the 4 'big' items, and the remaining 70 items sold for an average of $7. Not big items, but it's amazing how much stuff we have lying around that we'll never use.

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