Lightening the load

I have a secret. One of my current obsessions is finding stuff to sell. You heard me. As in, looking around my house and selling everything that is not totally necessary. In the past 8 months I have sold electronic equipment, purses, an old laptop, old strollers, bedroom furniture, our coffee table, a kitchen aid mixer, and lots of other stuff. Oh, and we had an enormous garage sale too. No joke.

It started when my husband and I read Dave Ramsey's book, Total Money Makeover. I don't care what your financial situation is, that book is inspiring. Really, really inspiring. It makes you look at things in a new light. At first I was selling stuff that we obviously didn't need, like stuff that had been hidden in the back of closets for years.

The thing about it was that we didn't miss anything. Not even a little bit. And I had more closet space. And some extra cash in the bank. It was really really freeing. It was after this realization that I made it a little bit of a game. "What can I sell next?" was what I kept asking myself. "What can I live without?"

I started cleaning out closets over and over again, each time pulling stuff aside that had been skipped before. Then I looked in storage closets and the garage. Then I looked at stuff we were actually using. Take our bedroom furniture for example. We had this gorgeous set of dark wood furniture that we bought 5 years ago. We also had a set of antique furniture in storage. The thing about it was that I did not like the set in storage. I finally swallowed my pride and thought, "this is silly". We don't need two sets of bedroom furniture. The set we have is too big for our room (we bought it in our old house). So, we sold our newer set and are now using the antique set. Sure, it is not my faorite but it does the job and the sale of the other set gave us cash to pay for the birth of my son. Talk about freeing...knowing that we had the cash set aside and that we would not have one single hospital bill. Amazing.

Anyways, do any of ya'll do this? Or have you done it before? I am telling you, whether you need the cash or you just want to clean out your closets, look around your house and sell all that stuff. We don't need all this stuff. Yes, I still have lots of things. More things than I know what to do with. I look around the house at all the stuff and almost loose my breath sometimes. But, I am working on it. I am selling all our stuff.

Even if you don't need the money, sell the stuff and then donate the money to a charity or give it to someone anonomously. There is something great that can be done in place of all that stuff cluttering our closets and our lives. I promise you this, you will not miss any of it. Not one bit. Trust me.

***Update: Apparently I forgot to put some important information in the original post. Before I decide to sell an item I think about its popularity, original value and whether or not it is a brand name. Let me give you some examples...If I want to sell something large that is valued over $25 (jogging stroller, gaming equipment, furniture, etc...) then I go Craiglist. If I am cleaning out the kids closets and I find old clothes that are in near mint condition or have brand names like Gap, then I list on ebay. I also use ebay when I find high dollar items that are small enough to deal with shipping. Most everything else, like the random odds and ends, get put into a pile for garage sales. Let me tell you my biggest advice on garage sales...Don't have one until you have  AT LEAST 5 big ticket items and 4 tables of stuff. If you need to, go in with friends and have a joint one. If you try and pile out one box of stuff into your driveway, no one will stop. They just don't. The big ticket stuff is what gets people to stop. The only time I don't sell higher value on Craigslist is when I know we are planning a garage sale within a couple months. Then I will save it and if it doesn't sell for the price I want it to then I list on Craigslist after the sale is over. When you are having a garage sale, don't just advertise with neighborhood signs- use Craigslist and free tracking sites too. (like garagesaletracker.com and garagesaleshunter.com)***

And, because posts are better with pictures, here is my little man. He is really getting good at sitting all by himself. Couldn't you just eat him up?!?!?!