How to Make Money while Decluttering AND Keeping Things out of the Landfill

Have you noticed how challenging it can be to get rid of your decluttered items? Well, first, kudos to you for actually decluttering! It takes quite a bit to go through all of our things and pick out the ones with which we are ready to party ways. But then what? The organizing mavens all tell you to have four (maybe five) boxes on hand into which you place the decluttered items: Keep, Sell/Donate, Recycle, Trash. Three of those boxes are pretty clear... keep it, recycle it or trash it. It's that second box that's the tricky one... at least for me. In part because I need to make a decision... should I sell... or should I donate?

Let's say we have a mortar and pestle that we bought at a garbage sale for $5 because we thought we'd use it for crushing herbs and what not. It's quite a nice mortar and pestle, heavy and solid out of some black stone. But... since the day we bought it, it has just sat on a shelf, gathering dust. I think my partner used it once to break up some almonds into smaller pieces. So we decided to let it go. Hooray!! One less non-used item cluttering up our space. So, let's see... which box does it go into... obviously the donate or sell box...

In the past, we've defaulted to the donate box... just packaged everything up willy nilly into boxes and bags and schlepped it off to one of the local thrift stores - Hospice Thrift Shoppe, Salvation Army Thrift Store or... (gasp)... Value Village. It's simple and easy and requires virtually zero time commitment. Just pack it up, put it in the truck and the next time I pass by one of those places, stop and donate. Feels good and is good for the environment too, keeping things out of the landfill.

Or is it.

You see, when we just pack things up willy nilly, we don't really give any thought to what we're packing up. Is it saleable? Or are we just offloading the discarding of our items onto someone else? I've read some articles that opened my eyes to how many donated items actually end up being landfilled because they can't be sold! Maybe that little nic-nac we put in the donation box should have gone into the trash box instead? But... wait... we don't really know if it's saleable or not... so let's err on the side of caution and assume that it is. We'll just toss it in the box and let the thrift store staff deal with it. Hmmm... should I feel guilty or not?

In my latest decluttering purge, a lot of the stuff was paper... so that was easy. It just went into recycling. But what about something like that mortar and pestle? Or the wooden lazy susan from IKEA. Or that stack of Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way) books. Some things just seem... too nice... to donate willy nilly.

We could host a garage sale... in the spring... when the pandemic is over... That would mean that we would have to store all of that stuff somewhere until we get together enough of it to host a garage sale. Or until garage sales are allowed again. And let's not even mention that garage sales are a tonne of work: getting everything out there, setting up tables, pricing things, haggling with customers, packing everything up at the end of the weekend and then what... still left with a bunch of stuff.

For some of our things, particularly bigger items like furniture and kayaks, we've tried selling them on Kijiji. While we've had success in previous years, stuff listed on Kijiji in the last few months has just gone nowhere. My sister, over in Vancouver, said she listed all of her stuff on Facebook Marketplace and my partner echoed her sentiments saying that lots of our friends were selling stuff on Marketplace. So, with a heavy sigh, I took my photos and moved some items over to Marketplace.

Well... wouldn't ya know... stuff moved! And fast! A dresser... gone. An IKEA hutch... gone. Those Julia Cameron books that had languished for weeks on Kijiji... two people interested within two hours of posting on Marketplace! What the heck? I think I've been fishing in the wrong pond, cause in the Marketplace pond, the fish are biting! And, it's not a heck of a lot of work or time either. People now pay via e-transfer and you just leave whatever it is in a bag or box out in the carport and the buyer comes by to pick it up. Nifty.

So, I've started pulling things out of the thrift store donate pile and am now flogging them on Marketplace. I've also gotten a bit more savvy and now search for whatever it is I plan on selling, just to get a sense of the going price for things. Because that dresser, which we sold for $25, was re-listed on Marketplace the very next day for waaaayyyy more than that! Hmph... seller beware... do your research first!

Anyhow... that black mortar and pestle... going rate seemed to be about $30-35 on Marketplace. So I posted it for $50 and within a couple of hours, got an offer for $35. Sold. That lazy susan... going rate was about $12... listed it for $10. Sold. Wowzers... In the last few days, we've sold $140 worth of stuff... not too shabby. The house feels lighter and our piggy bank is a little plumper.

Money... Moola... Cashola...
Photo by Michelle Spollen on Unsplash

I have to admit to being a bit torn... on the one hand... I feel like I'm taking money away from the thrift stores who could sell our stuff and pocket the money for good causes. Except Value Village of course... where only a very small percentage of the proceeds goes to their "partner charity". They are, after all, a for-profit company! Anyhow... I know that a lot of our donated items would be listed for cheap in a thrift store, nowhere near what we could get by selling them on Marketplace. So perhaps the solution is to peel away 10% of our net sale proceeds and make a donation to the organization once a year.

I also have to admit, this success at selling almost makes me want to go trolling through Hospice and Sally Ann (Value Village is too expensive) and hunt out items that they are selling for cheap (like on 30% Off Thursdays) and then turn around and resell those items on Marketplace. Hmmm... could be a budding little side business.

There are, of course, some things that don't sell all that well on Marketplace, like nic-nacs. I also don't know that I'd want to go to the hassle of listing every single item of clothing. Although... my sister has done really well with selling batches of kids clothing or toys.

We'll have to see how this goes. Perhaps our early success is just due to the fact that we are selling our best, plumpest items... time will tell.

In the meantime, I need to take advantage of the sunshine coming through the window to take some better photos of our next lot of items!