All manner of things shall be SELL
Jul. 27th, 2005 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j4I have mountains of things that I want -- nay, need -- to get rid of. It would be nice to swap some of them for piles of the little round beer tokens with the Queen's head on; but generating space is at least as important as the money.
Possible options I'm considering are a garage sale (well, a house sale, since we can't actually use the garage at the new house) or a blanket sale (like a car boot sale, only, er, with blankets) somewhere other than our house. If it's a blanket sale, other people will be able to come and sell their stuff too! The most likely date for this madness appears to be the August Bank Holiday weekend, but unfortunately that's also the date when everybody buggers off to sit in traffic jams for 3 days. So, a quick poll:
[Poll #540443]
I should also mention that while I have done (and will continue to) sell bits and bobs on eBay from time to time, there's just Too Much Stuff here for me to be able to list it all on eBay within a reasonable time-frame (I want to get rid of this stuff before the end of 2005!) while holding down a full-time job. And while I may fantasise about quitting my tedious office job and starting up some kind of house-clearance and eBay brokering company, I'm not actually about to do it Right Here, Right Now.
Possible options I'm considering are a garage sale (well, a house sale, since we can't actually use the garage at the new house) or a blanket sale (like a car boot sale, only, er, with blankets) somewhere other than our house. If it's a blanket sale, other people will be able to come and sell their stuff too! The most likely date for this madness appears to be the August Bank Holiday weekend, but unfortunately that's also the date when everybody buggers off to sit in traffic jams for 3 days. So, a quick poll:
[Poll #540443]
I should also mention that while I have done (and will continue to) sell bits and bobs on eBay from time to time, there's just Too Much Stuff here for me to be able to list it all on eBay within a reasonable time-frame (I want to get rid of this stuff before the end of 2005!) while holding down a full-time job. And while I may fantasise about quitting my tedious office job and starting up some kind of house-clearance and eBay brokering company, I'm not actually about to do it Right Here, Right Now.
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Date: 2005-07-27 11:16 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2005-07-27 12:24 pm (UTC)Brains!
Date: 2005-07-27 12:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-27 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-27 12:13 pm (UTC)Couple of thoughts: is it definitely worth the hassle of organising even this variety of sale rather than just going for freecycle/charity shops? If you invite other people to bring *their* kit, will you be able to resist picking up stuff from there (thus maybe not having quite the net reduction in Stuff you're after)? And have you thought about having a back-up plan for things that don't shift? (e.g. putting everything left-over in car boot & taking it straight to charity shop on Tuesday morning when they open).
But I would like to come up to Cam sometime soon, anyway!
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Date: 2005-07-27 12:23 pm (UTC)Worth the hassle -- well, it wouldn't really be any hassle to say "I'm having a sale on this day, please feel free to turn up and buy stuff".
Working for Oxfam I've become increasingly disillusioned with the whole 'charity shop' thing, and whether giving stuff to them is always a worthwhile thing to do. (More on that in another comment if you want...)
Also, while I probably will give the stuff that doesn't sell to charity shops or just give it away on ucam.adverts.giveaway, I am also slightly selfish and I would like to make some money, because I am short of money. If if turns out that everybody I know thinks trying to make money from people I know is a bad thing then I'll just look for a car boot sale I can do.
Picking up a bit of Other Stuff is not necessarily a bad thing. e.g. if I get rid of three suitcases full of clothes and buy a handful of CDs, then a) I've saved loads of space, & b) if they're CDs I was thinking of buying anyway then they'll almost certainly be cheaper from a jumble sale type thing.
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Date: 2005-07-27 12:29 pm (UTC)Charity shops - well, tbh I get rid of more stuff via Freecycle anyway these days, because you can get people to come pick it up & therefore it doesn't hang round the hall in a plastic bag for ages (see laziness, above). I figure charity shop = better than bin (&, see above, couldn't be arsed with sale options). Though I would be interested in your opinions on charity shops & worthwhileness.
I don't think there's anything at all wrong with trying to get money for the stuff, whether from people you do know or people you don't! Just contemplating the hassle vs cash calculus - which for me I think would come out the other way than it does for you. Maybe I am just afeared of sales.
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Date: 2005-07-27 12:42 pm (UTC)I figure charity shop = better than bin
The problem is that I'm becoming increasingly convinced that a lot of the time charity shop == bin. If they don't have room for stuff they will just bin it, and their policies on what is good enough to sell and what isn't often seem so arbitrary. Maybe this is just Oxfam, or Oxfam is worse than most, though? Certainly the Oxfam bookshop where I work throws away about 50 boxes of books a week, many of which would certainly be good enough for some charity shops to sell; and they've just had to get rid of a load of books because Central Office insists on delivering the Christmas cards in July -- once those are in the storeroom they don't have room to store as many books. There is NO WAY I am giving any of my books to them.
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Date: 2005-07-27 12:54 pm (UTC)Our local charity shop is, er, Cancer Research or something, I think. Certainly not Oxfam. Oxfam's shops do tend to look a little *shinier* than most other charity shops, I guess.
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Date: 2005-07-27 03:17 pm (UTC)Why doesn' Oxfam just pass the books they don't want onto less famous charity shops? *boggles* That seems really sad and stupid.
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Date: 2005-07-27 03:22 pm (UTC)Not allowed to by law -- AIUI basically charities aren't allowed to give money to other charities & it'd count as that. Can't remember the exact bit of legislation now but it's in the Charities Commission.
Yes, I think it's stupid as well, and so do a lot of the people who work there, but they can't do much about it. :-/
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Date: 2005-07-27 03:38 pm (UTC)I was in there about two hours ago...
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Date: 2005-07-27 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-27 03:49 pm (UTC)Oh dear. I feel an unavoidable junk collection scheme coming on. What actual volume are we talking? I have serious objections to people Throwing Away Books, and a car, and could put together a list of other second-hand book destinations...
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Date: 2005-07-27 04:06 pm (UTC)I offered to just take them all home myself, like a personal waste-collection thing, and apparently that's out of the question because of insurance -- if I stubbed my toe while picking up boxes of books, they'd be liable. I guess you'd have to set up as a company for disposing of waste books... hmmm. If you seriously wanted to look into doing so, I'd be delighted to help!!
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Date: 2005-07-27 04:08 pm (UTC)To be fair, some of the books they throw away are actually badly torn, have pages missing, or are even mouldy; and some are Not Actually Books (the 1992 Good Food Guide, for instance, is Not A Book; and call me a literary snob but I'm fairly ambivalent about the Reader's Digest Condensed Books...). And some are too out of date to be useful e.g. old school science books (though probably of curiosity value to somebody). But, well.
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Date: 2005-07-27 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2005-07-27 04:26 pm (UTC)One way to get to know your neighbours would be to organise a bring-and-take for the street or some subunit thereof; I like you want some b33r tokens when I can get them, but our B&T worked quite well; people got rid of stuff, picked up the odd bits they could use, and the rest went to three local charities and the dump in that order. We got a magazine rack, and got rid of the cutlery trays, some clothes, a load of plastic bottles, the garden lounger which had no cushion and which we were never going to use anyway, and some cabinet doors. Our neighbour needed a larger cat-to-vet-type carrier, and wanted to get shot of her smaller one; that worked just fine.
I must consult about the BH w/e, but I suspect that 'II is hankering after sth less practical. :-(
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Date: 2005-07-27 04:58 pm (UTC)How exciting! ^_^
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Date: 2005-07-28 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2005-07-28 04:01 pm (UTC)hmm
Date: 2005-08-02 04:19 pm (UTC)hmm
Date: 2005-08-02 04:20 pm (UTC)The housewarming cake was an inspiration
Date: 2005-08-04 06:13 am (UTC)