Thursday, April 9, 2015

Thrifty Thursday: Selling Lots Before Moving

I am doing my best to downsize all of the things in the house before moving to our new house so that we don't have all that clutter.  I started with at least three trips to Goodwill to donate the small things that I didn't think that it was worth to sell. 

I separated out the items that I was going to sell and make a little money.  I took lots of pictures and put some of the big stuff up on Facebook (I am a member of a bunch of different yard sale groups). I also answered a few posts of people interested in things like glass bottles and sold 12 glass baby bottles without having to do much work.

I sold my son's convertible crib.


With Dresser


I also sold my husband's bed


I sold smaller stuff that my son had long ago outgrown.  It is a little harder to make money selling things that are so small but it quickly adds up.  I was working on lots of little kids toys and here are just a few of the many things that I sold in the last few weeks.


Throw in some clothes which don't take up a lot of space but we really don't need anymore.  I started with sleepers because it seems that those are very popular.  Most of the people that came to get sleepers looked through the clothes of the size that they were interested in.  I even sold a few toys with the clothes purchases.



And a few larger kids toys like his wagon, rocket ship ride-on and rocking sheep.



I sold a stroller that we got for a vacation when my little man was much smaller and sold it for nearly what I paid for it because it was barely used.
 





I tried to sell a few not kids things but the only success other than the bed was the electric griddle.  We have a new one that has the panini maker on the other side and we haven't used this for a long time.  Super glad to not have to move it and make a little money at the same time.


The finally tally of my first attempt to get rid of a few things and make a little money was $788!!!  I was hoping for a little more success but I am still happy with what I have made so far.  I have to pull out the little clothes and go through them to see if there are some things that I might make a little money on and a few things that I have listed that I need to repost that didn't sell the first time.  Here is hoping that I find a few more things that are packed away to sell and declutter. 

Have you had success selling locally online??  I feel like I get a better price selling online then I do having a yard sale?  Although I usually make around $200-$300 from a yard sale which I only have to work for one day and online takes a few weeks.  I make a little more money selling online because you get to the people who specifically want things and know that the pricing is less then buying new.  Let me know if you have any tips for me going forward!!!

4 comments:

  1. Wow, that is amazing! Great job, Alison! $788 is nothing to sneeze it, especially when you could have just donated everything and not gotten a cent for it or just moved it to your new house and spent a lot of time and effort to keep things you didn't need anymore!

    I'm guilty of not wanting to put the time and effort in selling our stuff. I'm very introverted and the idea of dealing with people to sell stuff just gives me hives. So I donate everything to the local thrift stores. My husband doesn't like Craigslist because he thinks we'll get murdered if we use it (!), we're not on Facebook, and the local Freecycle group is run by people I really dislike so I quit that group a couple of years back.

    The only "success" I've had selling stuff is books that I was going to donate to the library. Since they couldn't store them and asked me to keep them until June, I listed the best ones on Half.com and I've sold about a dozen of them. Aside from listing them, the shipping process is very easy so it's not a big burden at all. The only thing is that I'm barely making any profit since I priced them very low (I followed their guidelines based on the price the book raised the last time it was sold, originally, but then I raised my prices slightly because... I'm greedy, kidding, because I needed to make sure that I was making something after paying for postage and the shipping materials). I haven't figured out how much I've made yet but I should... Half.com transfers the money twice a month and I would need to deduct my shipping materials and estimate how much gas I spent driving to the post office too.

    When the kids were younger, we'd have yard sales that I let them conduct (they loved it!) and let them keep the money but again we always priced our stuff very low (because my main goal was to declutter) so we never made more than $30-$40.

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    1. I actually took four loads of stuff to goodwill too but the hardest part for us to get rid of things is that we know that we spent a pretty penny on the items when we got them and we have a hard time to get rid of things. I am going to through and try to sell a whole bunch more things and hope to get rid of a few other things and make a little more money. I know that it is a little bit of work but at least I am bringing in a little more money when so much is going out the door. I have done a yard sale every year and made about $200-$300 but I am not sure if I can do one this year because we never know what is going on at our house with people coming to see it and all of the selling process. I should have thought of that before putting the house on the market but we were really busy with so many other things to even think about it!!! I am going to need some tips on half because I have so many boxes of books that I want to cut down on all of the junk at the house. I totally need to start doing it!!

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  2. Alison, did you ever try to sell your things on ebay? They do have a local pick up too you can check when you list. I know you were selling coupons now and then on there, I started selling January 2nd to try and make extra cash, I try to list daily, even if it's only 1 thing. I actually opened up a store by mid January to get more free listings each month. The hardest thing was trying to figure out postage, that is what my down fall was, but I think I have it figured out. Good Luck on your selling, the extra money is great isn't it?

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    1. I tried to sell books and a few other things on eBay that I thought that I could get a higher price online then I could locally but I was just trying to get rid of few things quickly and locally was an easier way to go. I hope to try again to sell a few things on eBay but I haven't done it in awhile. I am going to do another round of things to clear out before the final move and hope that we can get less things going to the new house :) Then I will go through and see what is left to go up on eBay!!!

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