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!

The Very Good Bean Butchers

Bean Butchers? Yep, they're a thing. Butchering poor harmless little beans, all so that we can eat something that looks like meat, tastes like meat but... ain't meat. Even though it's butchered. What a cool idea... and apparently a wildly popular and growing trend.

For a while now, I've been aware The Very Good Butchers. They are expert bean butchers and created various meat-free alternatives using beans, organic veggies and vital wheat gluten (a.k.a. seitan). They are a relatively local company (120 km away in Victoria) which is always nice. Go local!

I know that technically this is a variation of processed food but... it also seems like their ingredient lists are fairly clean. There aren't any weird preservatives and... well... I've been wanting to try them for a while. Our local health food store carries some of their items, mostly sausages, but the VGB site has a few other intriguing products: taco stuffers, BBQ Jackfruit (say what??), Ribz, burgers and even Stuffed Beast (also comes unstuffed).

Big Butcher Box
top row - Pepperoni, BBQ Jackfruit, Ribz
middle row - Taco Stuffers, Smokin' Burgers, Burgers
bottom row - Very British Bangers, Smokin' Bangers

I was poking around their website in mid December and many of their items were sold out, including the Stuffed Beast. The Beast gets rave reviews even from meat-eaters sooo... one of these days we may give that a try. But for now... we decided to dip our toe into the water and try one of their Butcher Boxes... For $112 (including courier shipping)... we get:

• 2 packs of Very Good Burgers
• 1 pack of Smokin' Burgers
• 1 pack of Smokin' Bangers
• 1 pack of Very British Bangers
• 2 packs of Taco Stuff'er
• 1 pack of BBQ Jackfruit 
• 2 packs of Ribz
• 2 packs of Pepperoni
  

The burgers and sausages are obvious... but what does one do with the taco stuffers? And the Jackfruit stuff? Fear not... The Very Good Butchers have some recipe ideas on their website as well. Nice.

We used to get a butcher box (real meat) from Twin Rivers Meats via the local Hospice Society (a fundraiser for them) soooo... this is not all that different in quantity or variety. And it will give me some more stuff to track in the freezer app! It's not like we are going to be having these things every day... maybe once a week... just to see how it goes. It's all a grand experiment

Although... if they ever get bought out by Big Food... we'll be taking our business elsewhere. There's a difference between supporting a small artisan business where you know you are getting quality vs being at the mercy of Big Food and their tendency to value profits over quality. I read that The Very Good Butchers went public on the Canadian Stock Exchange this past year. This might be explained by The Very Good Butchers making an appearance on the Dragon's Den two years ago! They0 had five Dragons vying for a slice of their business. Fascinating... Time will tell if quality still trumps share-holder profits.

What's in Your Freezer?

Have you ever lost anything in your freezer? Of course you have. We all have. Most freezers are bottomless black holes, particularly chest freezers. "Oops... forgot we had that roast... now it's totally freezer-burnt!" It always annoys me when we have to toss food away...

Fridge freezers aren't much better, be they the traditional top-mount ones or the pull-out drawer ones. Our fridge freezer is on the bottom of the fridge but consists of two doors, one for each side. There are three pull-out racks on each side which, you might think, would make it much easier to organize things but... such is not the case. It just means it's easier to lose something and then have to hunt through six different racks trying to find the elusive item.

Oh sure, it starts out as organized... we have a plan for what food will go into what rack but... over time, a rack will be too full, so we put something into a place where it does not belong and...very quickly... we lose track of what is in the freezer. Sigh.

And our chest freezer, which is tiny (5 cubic feet) can still lose things. Particularly if they cycle down to the bottom... you have to haul everything out in order to figure out what might be in the frosty pit. It's not the most efficient system in the world. And... ***cough***... sometimes we are too lazy to label bags or containers. "We'll remember that this is pea soup, right?" Nope... turns out apple sauce and pea soup can look remarkably similar through blurry, frosty plastic containers.

For a while, we had a laminated sheet of paper where we would try to keep track of what we had in the freezers and how much. That was when our fridge freezer was just the regular top-mount one. Two freezers... easy... nope. It worked for a while and then we'd get behind and... it all fell apart. Now, with a fridge freezer that has, essentially, 6 compartments, a two-sided piece of paper isn't going to work.

So I started snooping around for a freezer app. Surely someone must have come up with such an idea. Turns out that they have... many different options.

I took a look and downloaded an app called Items in my Freezer... it looked pretty simple.

I was able to add different freezer areas - so Chest Freezer - basket, Chest Freezer - shelf, Chest Freezer - bottom, etc. And then each pull-out rack in our fridge freezer got it's own section as well. I then did a freezer inventory coupled with some reorganizing and entered it all into the app. Voila! Instant freezer inventory. And it is relatively easy to update it as we consume things or add things. The only hiccup is that it doesn't allow us to sort by categories. So if my partner asks if we have any more baked beans, I have to scan the various freezer lists to see where baked beans show up (some are upstairs for easy use and some are in the chest freezer). It's annoying. But it's also free... and yet... annoying.

So I have been snooping around some more looking for an app that would allow us to categorize things and sort better. It would also be nice if the app were shareable so my partner could have it as well.

And I came across an called Frizor (it's by French developers - hence some of the quaint spelling mistakes).

It has ads or you can buy a subscription which costs €1/month (about $1.50/month) or €7/month (about $11/year). It has categories (veggies, meat, fish, starters, desserts, individual dishes, etc) and you can sort by all sorts of things, freezing date, categories, alphabetical or expiration date. I just downloaded it and am going to have to go and do another freezer inventory but... I think it has potential and it might be worth the cost. We'll try it for a while with the annoying ads and then see how it goes. It might be worth the annual cost (breaks down to $1/month) just in limiting the amount of stuff that gets wasted. Although... since we've gone meatless, there is much less of that!

I'm going to give it a try for a few weeks and will report back on how it goes...

How do you keep track of your freezer stuff?  Heck, do you even keep track of your freezer stuff?

The Doughnut Economy - Going Local!

Well... this is exciting! I read a book a few months back, The Doughnut Economy by Kate Raworth and have been meaning to blog about it ever since but... it always got bumped to the back of the blogger to-do list.

Now though... it's front and centre again because Nanaimo is going to implement the Doughnut model! The first municipality in Canada to take it on! That is excellent news. And, here's a link to their planning paper (opens as a pdf). Nanaimo is not the first city to take this on... Amsterdam was first out of the gate on that one... but still, first in Canada is something!

So, here's the doughnut model in five minutes or less. The idea is that there is a lower and an upper limit within which we can live a sustainable life, not just for ALL humans but also for the environment which is not infinite.

The author, Kate Raworth (an economist) calls the lower boundary the Social Foundation (that's the dark green ring in the middle). It includes things like social equity, gender equity, health, food, water, income, education, resilience, voice, jobs and energy.

The upper boundary (the outer dark green ring) is the Environmental Ceiling and includes things like chemical pollution, atmospheric aerosol loading, ozone depletion, biodiversity loss, land use change, climate change, freshwater use, nitrogen and phosphorous cycles and ocean acidification.

This is an out of balance model - essentially
the state of the world today. Red means not good.

The goal is to live within those two green rings - the safe and just space for humanity that is built on inclusive an sustainable economic development. So, take care of all humans but not at the expense of the earth. Take care of the earth but not at the expense of humans.

This is very exciting news. When I read the book earlier this year, it really gave me hope that we can see our way forward through this environmental and humanitarian disaster that is looming over us.

For those interested, I blogged about the book on one of my other blogs (yes, I have more than one!). It was while I briefly resurrected my 2019 book reading challenge (which took a hiatus at the end of June 2019). I found that reading was fine... but reading AND taking notes AND blogging was not sustainable. But... I did an 8-part series on the Doughnut Economy book by Kate Raworth.

Here's the link for the first blog on the book. To read the rest of the series, scroll to the bottom of that blog post (not this one), and just below the Comments, you'll see a line with "Newer Post" on the left and "Older Post" on the right. Click on Newer Post and it will take you to the second part of the eight-part series... etc.

I highly recommend the book. I know, I know... economics... ick! So dry, so boring. But, no! Not this one. It is really good and very much worth a read. It's gonna be fascinating to see how Nanaimo implements this!

Books, Books and More Books

I love books. I'm not going to call myself an addict but... I really, really love books.

My love affair with books started when I was a kid. For the longest time, I kept one of my favourites... I am a Bunny by Ole Risom with illustrations by Richard Scarry.

It was quite tattered and apparently 3-year-old-me thought Nicholas the Bunny needed glasses because on each page, I drew a set of glasses on him. Not sure why... since no one in my family wore glasses, least of all me! But there you go... don't give a kid a book and a pen...

When I entered grade school, I was introduced to the wonderful world of Scholastic Book Services.

Favourite horse stories

Oh my goodness... the flyers and order forms would get handed out at school in the fall and spring and I would peruse all the offerings and make my selections - usually animal stories... particularly horse stories. I still have three of my favourites: Old Bones: the Wonder Horse, Blitz and Blanco: The Legend of the White Stallion.

But Scholastic Book Services cost money and so my Mom introduced me to the public library. Whoa... soooo many books! At the time, our public library had a super cool kids section. It was a big room that was almost two stories high. A set of stairs led to an upper level which was a balcony that ran around three sides of the room. There were books up top and... the area underneath the balcony was made of up of several shallow cave-like chambers. The ceiling was so low that adults had to duck down to get into each chamber. There were book shelves on three sides of each chamber and... it was the coolest thing ever for a kid... an Aladdin's cave of undiscovered treasure.

I would usually totter out of the library with a massive stack of books and gobble them up over the next week or two. Loved the library.

At the same time... I was a relatively easy kid when it came to Christmas and birthdays... just buy me books: Hardy Boys, Fury of Broken Wheel Ranch, anything by Rutherford Montgomery, The Black Stallion...

Library card catalogue - how times have changed

As I moved through the education system, I dabbled in the school libraries... also good, but not as memorable... and then came university.

I loved the twisting rabbit-warrens of UBC's Main Library stacks but the university library didn't really stock a lot of fiction (unless it was 100+ years old!).

While attending UBC, I never got connected with the the Vancouver Public Library system. I think I went there once and requested a library card. Turns out that people living in UBC dorms were not considered Vancouver tax-payers sooo... no pay taxes, no get library card.

It became a bit of a moot point because I started earning some money and was able to feed my book appetite. Science fiction... westerns... mysteries... history novels... I acquired my own library at home.

The only problem was... I moved a lot... on average once every year... and after a while, packing up all those books became a chore. Not to mention I was running out of bookshelf space. And so I'd regularly declutter my books. I don't have my Cadfael books anymore. Nor my Dick Francis, Sharpe, Ramage, Pern, Star Trek, Stainless Steel Rat, Anne Perry or Louis L'Amour books. I still bought and read a lot of books... I just didn't keep them for very long. Kind of... errr... disposable convenience... ***cough*** (The irony of this is not lost on me...).

After a while, my book-buying habit became a bit expensive. Books aren't exactly cheap... a novel nowadays costs around $20. I used to travel a lot and passing through an airport was dangerous for me. I'd wander through the Virgin or Relay bookstores behind security and easily see a dozen books that looked super interesting. Even though I had at least two or three books with me, I would usually end up buying another one or two.

Somewhere along the way, I had forgotten about libraries... but not really. I completed online applications for a library card in Prince George and, later, in Calgary... but I never set foot in the actual buildings and definitely never borrowed a book. I had gotten out of the library habit and established a book-buying habit. Which was fine when I had enough disposable cash to satisfy my book cravings... but not so fine when we went on a year-long sabbatical and found ourselves on a budget.

One of MANY Bookie Monsters out there

My book-buying was cut off and I went into serious book-withdrawal. I became the Cookie Monster of books - The Bookie Monster. [Believe it or not... I thought I had come up with something new and cool with that little rhyme but... Bookie Monster is already a "thing"!]

I bought an e-book reader, figuring that e-books were easier to schlep around and less expensive but... honestly... reading an e-book is not the same as a real book. And e-books, even though they are cheaper than real books, are not exactly "cheap".

I discovered AbeBooks - an online bookstore where I could buy second-hand books from all over the world. Better, but still not great... not for someone with as voracious an appetite as myself.

During our sabbatical, we moved to the Island and... at that point... I rediscovered the public library. A whole new world opened up. I was amazed to discover that libraries have come a loonnnnggg way since the days of card catalogues and microfiche.

Everything is online... even inter-library loans... It's super-convenient and utterly magical. Our library system is even more magical because it's a regional library. We have three physical libraries in our city, but they are not the be all and end all. There are three dozen libraries in other communities that feed our regional library. That's a lot of books. And it's so easy... go online, search for the book I'm interested in and request it be delivered to my local branch. Bing. Done. The book gets delivered... sometimes within a few days... other times... a few months.

Cover - Atomic Habits
by James Clear

That's the only thing... getting books via the library requires patience. This is not going to feed the instant gratification monster within me. Because even though we have 36+ library branches... other people have discovered the library too and the hold lists can be long. Particularly if the book is new and hot.

For example, I put a hold on Atomic Habits (James Clear) a few weeks/months back. I had seen it in an airport bookstore and took a picture of the cover (my new habit) and then added it to my "To Read" list. When I got home, I requested it via the library. Except our library system "only" has 12 copies... and there are 119 holds... of which I am #37... sigh... Patience, Young Grasshopper, patience.

On the other hand, receiving an email from the library informing me that a book I've been waiting for is ready to be picked up... ooohhh... it's like Christmas!! I can't wait to scamper to the library and bring the book home and start reading.

I use the hold system with gusto... I currently have nine books on hold. The only thing is... sometimes a bunch of them come in at around the same time and I find myself dealing with an over-abundance of riches. I generally tend to have more than one book on the go at any one time but... even I can get overwhelmed by the pressure of reading four or five books in three weeks. I am learning to rein in my book ordering bug...

There is one more thing that I like about the library... I know that getting a book through the library means it's going to be a well-used book. It's going to be read by more than one set of eyes (mine). When I buy a book from the bookstore... I will often only read it once and then let it go by donating it to a thrift store. It might get read again... or maybe not. Thrift store bookshelves do NOT use the Dewey Decimal system... and trying to find a specific book is like hunting for the proverbial needle in a haystack... with no guarantee that the needle you are seeking is even IN the haystack! Given how many books get donated to thrift stores... it's only understandable that at some point... books end up going to the landfill.

You see... books are incredibly hard to recycle due to the glue in the binding. Our city's recycling system accepts magazines, catalogues and phone books (ummm... glue in binding?) but not paperbacks or hardcovers. I know that some cities accept paperback books for recycling but not if they have ever gotten wet or if the paper has turned brown. This is a bit of a problem... and so I am trying to emphasize the Reduce and Reuse aspects of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle".

I still buy the occasional new physical book but only when I absolutely CANNOT wait for it and expect to use it long-term. I do buy e-books a bit more frequently and I still get some second-hand books via AbeBooks. If I'm going to buy books though, most of them come via thrift stores or garage sales. They are cheap and I don't feel bad about reading them and letting them go again, back into the pool of second-hand books from whence they came. But... ultimately... the library is my biggest source of reading material.

The 2018 value of our library cards

The Board of our regional library has an annual report in which, amongst other things, they report on the "value of a library card".

In 2018, based on the number of users and the value of materials borrowed... the average value of a library card was $661.

That number intrigued me and I once counted up the number of books I borrowed in a year and my value was well over $800. That's $800 that stayed in my pocket!

In many ways... getting books from the library ticks a bunch of boxes.

• It's good for me and my finances (more books available to read; less money spent on books, less square footage devoted to book storage, less hassle moving, teaches me patience).
• It's good for the environment (more reads/book).
• It's good for my community (more library patrons=bigger budget=more books).
• It might, however, not be so good for authors (less books sold).

I haven't even touched on all the other services offered through our local library: DVDs, CDs, audio books, magazines, podcasts, online language courses, research services, internet access, study space etc, etc... Heck, our library even has a puzzle table where there is always a 1000 piece puzzle on the go... cool! And it's all... FREE!***

For me, reconnecting with the pubic library system is one small step in living sustainably. It might not be as convenient as ordering a book via Amazon Prime but... I'll trade that for sustainable living... in this instance at least!


***Well... as long as you are a resident of the city in which the library is located. Which means somewhere along the line you are paying property taxes which then go toward supporting your local library. So not really "free" but... why not max out as much value from property taxes as possible by wringing out as much use from the library as possible!