I have sold a few items on Craigslist – bikes, kayaks, old freezer, kids toys etc.

I think the main tips are:

1) List your item in the most appropriate category.
2) Make every word count in the title of your posting – think about what someone searching for your item might key in.
3) Keep the body of the listing short and accurate. Be 100% accurate about the condition of the item.
4) Price it competitively – check Ebay completed listings for examples of what your item might sell for, but expect to get slightly less on Craigslist since it’s not an auction.
5) Take one or two well-lit photos against an appropriate background. I have used white folding project boards as a mini “studio” background for smaller items.

Good luck with your future listings.

It may depend where you live. Are you in the suburbs or a small town? Generally any place that has students or poor people, you’ll find someone willing to buy your microwave for $15 or shopping at thrift stores.

A nice boy with a backpack just came and paid $30 for my kitchen cart not 30 minutes ago and I’ve also sold a tv, vcr, desk, hutch, end table, bookshelves, 4 chairs, and (another) desk on craigslist just this month.

It makes life so much more simple and freeing!

The advice that I have is to avoid accumulating junk in the first place. Move it on as soon as possible.

Why? Aside from cluttering space, it costs money to keep. Assume that a family keeps a room for storing things such as old kids toys (that they never use), old furniture, outdated electronics, etc. The room is 200 aq feet. At a rate of, lets say, $100/sq foot, this comes out to $20,000 per year. When you think about how much you are paying for this space with your mortgage, you can see that there are costs to holding things.

Is it worth the money, perhaps over $100 per month, to pay for storing such things? Probably not. Best to get rid of something that won’t be used, and do it right away. Give it away, donate to a charitable organiziation, sell it, recycle it, throw it away – just move it out. You will save money, maybe get some back, and possibly help someone else.

What do we do next, now that everyone else has figured out this albeit good but, imo, worn-out advice?

What ensued was a long, arduous process trying to remember and literally itemize on a spreadsheet the contents of their home. I’m not talking just clothes and knick-knacks here either, I’m referring to appliances, furniture, electronics, etc. They had pictures of most items, and even were able to take pictures after the flood of the damage, but the insurance companies wanted more information to reach a “fair” settlement. The good news is, they ultimately received a decent settlement but only after they went through this painstaking process all while managing the emotional effects of such a loss.

I’m imagining a Tibetan monk reading this site from high in the mountains, using his monastery’s sole communal computer. Even I personally don’t have *that* much stuff (I have a video tour of my house if you want to see it).

“Your Stuff could get stolen or destroyed, and then you’d have to prove to your insurer that you once owned it.”

This is not true at all. If you have stuff that you don’t use, and you don’t need to sell, then you could let it get stolen and you’d never even notice the difference. If you can survive with something perpetually stored in a box in an attic, you can survive without it entirely. Assume the bag of old clothes you were going to donate to Goodwill got stolen. Would you feel obligated to contact your insurer? No? Neither would I.

I sell stuff on Craigslist and Ebay, too, but I’ve certainly never put this much effort into tracking everything I own. I just don’t care enough about the things in my house to keep a detailed set of records documenting my ownership of them. If they get stolen or destroyed, I’m sure I’ll survive somehow.

You can easily make the argument that we would have better to just not spend the money in the first place, but everything we have sold we have gotten value off of. For example, I sold used textbooks for about the same price as I paid for them.

I’m holding a giveaway for Annie Leonard’s “The Story of Stuff” book over at my blog, The Non-Consumer Advocate which ends on Friday.

Here’s a link:

http://thenonconsumeradvocate.com/2010/03/story-of-stuff-book-giveaway/

Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”

We’ve done garage sales and we donate quite a bit. From an ease standpoint, donation is much better. Financially at high income, I have found that donating is also more beneficial as people rarely want to pay “thrift store value” for things at a garage sale.

Above all else, much better to get rid of your stuff than pay a storage company to store it. Guys like Public Storage and others rake in about $16 billion a year storing people’s stuff. My guess is that most people store stuff worth less than 2 years worth of fees.

Since I err on the side of caution, I have taken photos of my apartment (including all furniture, drawer contents etc.) so that I have some proof if worse came to worse and the insurance company didn’t cover me for replacement of the things I need… plus it would help me figure out quicker what to replace vs. just going from memory.

Thanks for the article!

I found this inventory database helper website on lifehacker, and have been using it in preparation for my move from N.C. to Or.