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

Simple phone

I get my fair share of teasing for still using a Nokia phone. So I feel quite vindicated that someone has now invented a new non-smartphone . It's pitched for those who want a decluttered life. Instead of features, its selling points are things like "reclaim a little quietude from the constant intrusions of technology", "no internet connection, no app store and definitely no camera for taking selfies". One quote from the article said "as smartphones get bigger and bulkier, there is a place for something small and simplified, without all the functions." That kind of statement resonates with me. Not just for phones, but for so many areas of life - including the houses we live in.

Why own a car, when you can go get?

That's the slogan of one company providing an alternative to car ownership. Here's our experience with them. Why not just have our own car? Another time I'll write a full post about that, but suffice to say that car ownership is a pain in the neck. The servicing, the maintenance, the repairs, the parking, the traffic, the registration, the insurance, the cleaning... For my wife and I, about 98% of our transport needs can be done on foot, by bike, by train, bus or ferry. Maybe 99% if you include rideshare. So we choose to avoid the pain (and cost) of car ownership. However, car use (I think of it separately from car ownership) can be handy in certain situations. We had one of those situations last weekend. Here's how it went. Booking a car My wife signed up for GoGet , and booked the car online for the time window she needed it. As a first-timer, she received her little membership card in the mail. On the day of the booking, GoGet sent her a reminder email about 20 minut...

Too Much Stuff

"Why is it so hard to resist new things even when we know we already have too much. Can we find an alternative to the more, more, more mentality?" That promo got me hooked into the half-hour doco "Too Much Stuff". Australian viewers can see it online . Otherwise, here are some of my highlights. Host Sarah Wilson sums up the problem right at the start. "At every turn we're urged to possess the next thing that will make us feel smarter and more desirable. Anything we want is available with just one click. We're filling up our lives with stuff; yet ultimately, many of us feel empty, guilty and stressed out by our consumption." She sets out to explore an alternative. To see if "radically reducing our consumption" can lead to a better life. (Spoiler alert: Yes) Sarah says many people call her a minimalist but she's not so much about getting rid of things, more about not buying stuff. What's wrong with the Marie Kondo approach? Each ep...