In an effort to make sure that both of my readers can’t possibly miss the things I think are important, I’m going to start doing a weekly roundup of the best of the internet. Judged solely, and arbitrarily, by me.
On topic:
These, naturally, are the posts that fit the theme of this site.
My 30 Day Project for April is to declutter my entire house. That’s every room, every dresser, every drawer. We’ve got 12 years of jointly accumulated clutter.
Our progress so far has been wonderful. The main level of our house is almost done.
In our daughters’ room, we put in bunk beds and pulled out a dresser. With the crib, changing table, and toddler bed removed, they actually have room to play on the floor. Their closet has been emptied and repurposed as scrapbooking and blanket storage. Cost: $140 for the bunk beds.
Our son’s room has had a dresser, a desk, and a bed replaced with a loft bed. Even with the 6 foot tall monstrosity of a bed, his room looks so much bigger. We still have to clean out his closet, which is mostly artifacts of a business we no longer have, leftovers from when his bedroom was our office. Cost: $260 for the loft bed.
Our room was depressing. Never dirty, but oh-so-full. The closet was jam-packed. The top shelf was full of towels and sheets. The closet rod couldn’t fit another shirt. There was a modular shelving system on the floor of the closet–full. We had three full dressers. The headboard has 5 foot tall cabinets, half of which were full of makeup and jewelry, the other half with books. Now, there is 1 empty dresser. It belonged to my great-grandmother, so it’s going to the shop to be refinished, instead of the garage sale to be sold. Another dresser has spare room in it. There’s no need to rearrange the cabinets to get to anything. The closet is less than half full and there is almost nothing on the floor of the closet. Gear for my side-line business is stored out of sight and out of the way. This is so much more relaxing.
We’ve tackled the kitchen, except for 1 cabinet, which is mostly cookbooks and booze. That will be fun to clean out.
Our front closet was worthless. It was so full we put hooks on the outside of the door to hang our coats. We pulled out a dozen coats we never wear. At least 20 pairs of shoes, some belonging to roommates gone 1o years. We can actually use the closet now. The shoes and boots all have homes. Our coats all fit…inside.
We have 1 closet and 1 cabinet left to address on the main level. There are also 3 small rooms in the basement that need to be gutted–the laundry room, the family room, and a room that has been designated for storage and the litter box. The last one will be the hardest. It’s full of remnants of hobbies past and failed ventures. I’m expecting some fights, flowing every possible direction.
In the process, we’ve filled our dining room with stuff for our garage sale…twice. It’s all getting priced and boxed as we go through it. We thrown away anything we won’t be able to sell. We’ve done all of this with the mutual understanding that nothing is coming back in the house. After the sale, it will be donated or sold on Craigslist, but it won’t become a part of our lives again. We are successfully purging so much. The “skinny clothes” are gone. When the time comes, they’ll be replaced. In the meantime, they can be put to better use on someone else. Hobbies that never took, games that are never played, it’s all going. We are getting down to the things that are actually used and useful.
It’s interesting to note that the process is getting easier as the month goes by. My Mother-in-Law is a hoarder. Those habits get passed down, but what was originally a source of stress has turned into a pleasant chore.
The most wonderful discovery of all? It turns out we don’t need a better storage system, we just need less stuff.
Update: This post has been included in the Money Hacks Carnival.
We are now to the end of Garage Sale Week here at Live Real, Now. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.
Image via Wikipedia
After you shut down on the last day, take the evening off. You’ve just been hard at work for 2-3 days and need a break. Deal with the stuff tomorrow. Tomorrow–and probably the next few days–you’ve got work to do. What do you do with everything that didn’t sell? If you’re planning on making garage sales a regular side-hustle, just box it all up and put it to the side until next time. After all, it’s all priced, sorted, and ready-to-go, right? If, like me, your goal was to declutter, then it’s time for some serious downsizing. Let’s dump the crap.
The first thing we did was box up all of the books and movies to bring to the used book store. We dropped the items at the sell table and spent half an hour browsing a bookstore. That’s never a good way for me to save money. The store we went to checks the demand for everything you bring in. If there’s no demand, they donate or recycle the items and you don’t get paid. DVDs bring about $1 each. VHS is demand-based. Paperbacks are something less than half of the retail price. Hardcovers are demand-based. We were offered $28 and pointed to the huge pile of discard/recycle items that we were free to reclaim. I picked out 4-5 books and movies that I thought had value and left the rest. Bringing the clutter back home would defeat the purpose of going there.
The clothes were handled two ways. First, all of the little girl clothes were bagged and set aside for some friends with a little girl. The rest were bagged and loaded in the truck for a run to Goodwill. The clothes filled the box of our pickup.
The random knick-knacks were also boxed up and delivered to Goodwill, along with most of the leftover toys. This was another completely full truck box. We had a lot of stuff in our sale.
The beat-up or low-value furniture that didn’t sell was put on the curb with “FREE” signs. I posted the free items on Craigslist and they were gone in just a few hours. The Craigslist ad said “Please do not contact, I will remove the listing when the items are gone.” Otherwise, there are usually 10-15 emails per hour asking if the items are still available. The ad didn’t even have pictures and it worked quickly.
Some of the furniture–the toddler bed, changing table, china cabinet, and the good computer desk–were hauled back to our garage to post on Craigslist with a price-tag. They are too good to give away. If the camera wouldn’t have died two nights ago, the pictures would already be up. Some of the other items were also reserved for individual sale. The extra router, the 6 inch LCD screen, and a few other toys will go on Ebay.
Finally there was some stuff that we decided we weren’t going to get rid of. We kept a few movies, but only because I didn’t notice them until I got back from the bookstore. My wife kept a box of Partylite stuff–though most of the leftovers were donated. Very little of the things we had ready for sale are being kept in our lives. Almost all of it is gone, or will be soon.
All in all, this was a cathartic end to last month’s 30 Day Project. There was some surprising emotional attachment to some things I didn’t think I cared about. It’s good to see it gone.
Note: The entire series is contained in the Garage Sale Manual on the sidebar.
If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do today? How would you spend your last hours? Would you go skydiving before the chance evaporated forever, or would you spend the day talking with your loved ones?
If you knew you would die in a month, what would you do? Would you plan a trip to the one place in the world you’ve always wanted to see? Would you look up all the friends you’ve been too busy to see?
What would you regret? Is there something you have always wished you’d done, but have put off for some reason or another? Do you want to write a novel, or backpack Europe, or watch a shuttle launch? Far more people regret opportunities missed than those they’ve taken. If there is something that you could do that would let you die happy, take steps today to make that a reality. Remember that you are probably not going to die in a day or a month, but don’t let your entire life slip away without doing the things that matter most to you.
Our lives are short. Far too short to waste time on the things that add no value. Everything you do should advance your happiness, either short-term or long. That doesn’t mean you should waste your life pursuing hedonism. Lives need meaning. Chase that meaning.
Find out what gives your life meaning. What do you do that lets you go to bed with a smile on your face? Those are the activities that you should maximize. What is wasting your time? You can probably shut off the news and never miss it. It’s just too much information that doesn’t add anything to your life. Does obsessing over Charlie Sheen’s latest antics ad any value to your life? Take that time and write a screenplay, take a walk, smell a flower, hug your kids, anything that provides actual value for you. Don’t waste your life on meaningless activities that do nothing more than kill time. Time is the one thing we have that we will not get back.
Many people go to their deathbeds thinking, “I wish I had X.” What is your X? What would you wish you had done?
English: Jalopy car in Joshua Tree National Park in Hidden Valley Campground (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When it’s time to replace your car, most people focus on the new car, instead of the old, but that is ignoring real money. Your old car–unless it has disintegrated–still has value. Sometimes, it’s just time to ask yourself, “When should I sell my car?”
When you’re looking to sell your car (like with We Will Buy Your Car), you generally have several options:
Tow & crush. If your car has been wrecked, doesn’t run, or is just old and beat up, you may be stuck with calling a junkyard and accepting $50 for them to pick up your car and crush it for scrap.
Trade it in. This is probably the least hassle, but–other than #1–doesn’t pay well. Dealerships are willing to pay something under what they will get at a wholesale auction, which is quite a bit less than the blue book value.
Sell it yourself. Now you’re thinking, “He’s going to buy my car! Oh, bother.” It can be a pain, but it’s also the best way to get a decent price for your wheels.
When you sell your car, there are a few things to keep in mind, much like when you sell something on Craigslist.
Don’t be alone. There are bad people in the world, but they don’t like witnesses. Bad things are much less likely to happen if you have company.
Know your price. Specifically, know three price: your dream price, the price that would make you happy, and the absolute lowest price you are willing to accept. Make sure you figure these numbers out ahead of time. Know what you are comfortable with before it comes time to close the deal.
Check IDs. The buyer is going to want to test-drive your car. That’s fine, but you want to make sure you know who is driving off in your car. “Officer, Sumdood took my car. He was wearing jeans.” That won’t get your car back.
Clean it up. Get the car detailed before you show it to a potential buyer. A sparkling-clean car will almost always bring in a few hundred extra dollars. It’s well worth the expense.
Following this plan should make the sale go as smoothly as possible and bring you the most possible money.
Readers, what have you done to dispose of an old car?
This is a sponsored post written to provide some insight into the world of used car retail.
Do you find the cloud in every silver lining? Is the glass not only half empty, but evaporating? Do you start every day thinking
Smiley head happy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
about how the effects of entropy on the universe make everything you do ultimately pointless?
You may be a pessimist.
Pessimism gets a bad rap. Without pessimists, we wouldn’t have insurance plans, missile defense systems, or Eeyore, and what would the world be without those things?
The thing you have to ask yourself is “Does the negativity make you happy?”
The next thing you have to ask yourself is whether or not you were lying with your previous answer.
If you have a negative outlook on everything, I have good news for you: it’s possible to defeat it. No matter how long you’ve been looking at the world through coffin-colored glasses, no matter how ingrained your negative slant is, it’s possible to change it.
You have to want to change it, because, as the saying goes, old habits die hard. Yippee kai yay.
You need a happy butt.
Little known fact: language shapes the way you think. If your language has no words for a concept, you will have a difficult time thinking about that concept, or even understanding it. Statistically, Asians are better at math than their western-world counterparts. Why? It’s not genetic. When a family moves to the US, the edge is lost within 2 generations. It’s not the amount of school they get. Even in backwaters with limited school access demonstrate the same abilities.
It’s the language. Euro-based languages are horrible. They are a clumsy mish-mash of crap from around the world, and the numbering system makes no sense. 11, 12, 13, huh? Spoken, that’s not a progression, it’s something we have to learn by rote. Why is 13 pronounce “thirteen”, with the ones place first, but 23 is pronounced with the tens place first, the way it is written? Where did the word “twenty” even come from? It’s obviously a horrible bastardization of “two” and “ten”, but is it self-evident? Does the progression through the decades follow some kind of rule? Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty. Nope.
The Asian languages (most of them) differ. The numeric progression is spoken in a rules-based progression that makes sense. 23 is literally “two tens three”, making learning math less about rote memorization and more about masters some simple rules.
In the western world, we are handicapped by our language, at least when it comes to math.
The rest of our thoughts are formed by language, too. Learn a language with different roots than the one your were born with and see how your perceptions change.
One of the signs of negative thinking is qualifying everything you say negatively. For example, one person might say “It’s a beautiful day, today” while Mr. Negativebritches would say “It’s a beautiful day, but it’s probably going to rain.” That’s a sad butt, err, but. Every time you qualify a sentence with a sad butt, you are reinforcing your negative view of the world.
The solution? Drop your drawers and paint on a smiley face. You need a happy but(t). You can rephrase the sentence into a happy thought without changing the sentiment or meaning in any way. Try this: “It’s probably going to rain, but it’s a beautiful day, now.” That’s a happy butt, and it reinforces the positive in your mind.
It sounds stupid, but it works. Your language shapes your life. Put a positive spin on what you say, and you will eventually start to think about life in a positive way.
Give it a shot. For the next week, every time you say something negative, qualify it with a happy butt. At the end of the week, come back here and tell me how it’s working and if you can sense a change in your mindset.
