Cash from Clutter

WOW, yesterday got a little heavy. Thank you all for reading and responding. I love starting conversations on how to save money, time, my mind...ect.

As I have talked about before my husband and I have two beautiful little girls. They are 2 and 4 and they have stolen our hearts. Not only are they wonderful but they are also the youngest girls in both sides of our family. As a result, we get a TON of hand me downs. I LOVE this!!! My girls are always dressed like a million bucks but we only spent $3 to get there (BIGGEST thanks to my sister-in-law). While this is great, there is also a down side. You get every ones hand me downs. We get all the things that are cluttering up other peoples houses to clutter up ours. For the most part everything is very nice. People don't give us junk or anything like that. It is just that you can only have so much in one house. This is all on top of the normal birthday, Christmas, you were supper good at the store you can pick out a $5 toy, stuff. I think you see where I am going here. Our house gets cluttered up quick and clutter makes me VERY anxious. When I am anxious, we will just say I am NO fun.

My remedy for this overabundance problem is that 4-5 times a year we uncluttered and resell. I get a laundry basket from the basement and we start to sift through all the toys and clothes. Any thing that has been played with less then twice in the past 6 months is going!!! We take the barbie number from 20 to 10. We separate all the doubles of My Little Pony. We dwindle the baby dolls from 12 mediocre ones to 5 really good ones. We take the play food from 100 cheap pieces to 20 really good quality ones. You get the point. Then I take all these toys and clothes to the best resale shops in town.

The resale shops only take the best stuff so here is my reselling process. First off I only take the best stuff to the shops. I learned if you put not so good stuff in with great stuff they will most likely write off all of it as not so great. I know where all the good shops are around town, how they pay (some shops give credits others cash), and the amount they pay for things. If you don't know this about your area it is worth looking into. Then I start with the store that pays the most and takes the most. Then I go down my list of shops until I reach the end. This, most of the time, will take all day and I DO NOT recommend taking the kids with you. Every time I do I end up spending all the money. Most of the time each buyer takes 1-2 hours to look through the baskets. I use this time as mommy alone time (get a coffee and read a great book). By the time I am done with the 3 shops I go to, I have only a few things left and $100-$150 in my pocket.

Depending on my mood at the time I do two different things with the left overs (the stuff the stores didn't take and the stuff that was not good enough for me to take and sell). Option one, my aunt has 3 yard sales a year, and if I feel like it I will hold on to it and put it in our “Aunt Mary's yard sale” box. My second option, and I have been doing this more lately, take it to the salvation army.

There you have it. A great way to declutter, save money, and make money all in one.

Happy Savings,

Lynden