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Lifestyle

De-cluttering Challenge! Days 2-3 + Sold App

sold App
Image courtesy of Sold

Still doing the 15-day de-cluttering challenge: For 15 days, you get rid of 7 things per day by recycling, selling, giving it away, or, as a last resort, disposing of it.

I have a few items that I wanted to sell, and thought it might be a good time to try out the Sold iPhone app. It’s supposed to optimize the price that you get for, say, a 1-year-old iPod. You take pictures of your item and describe it; Sold scans the internet for like items to suggest a price for you. If you like the price, Sold will post it for you on sites like Amazon and eBay, and when you have a buyer, it sends you a prepaid, pre-labeled box with bubble wrap included so all you have to do is plop it in and ship.

I tried it with one of my kids’ pairs of Joe’s Jeans. Snapped pic, wrote description. Sold went trolling for a price…and came back to me the next day saying that it couldn’t find consistent demand for it online.

Their blog has some guidelines on what sells on Sold. I suspect that electronics with very specific specs tend to do well — the type of thing that a bot has no trouble identifying. So when I have something that I think might fit the bill, I’ll try again.

But for now, I’ve listed eight items on eBay…so far. I won’t count them in my daily count til they’re sold, but I have bids on 6 of them so far!

Here’s my challenge list so far:

Day 1 – 6 tops, 3 skirts, 1 dress
Day 2 – 27 books, sent to my kids’ school for their used book fair
Day 3 – 2  tops, 1 kids’ leotard, 2 pairs socks, recycled a box of old business cards, 2 books

How’s your challenge going so far?

 

Lifestyle

De-cluttering Challenge! Day 1

I’ve been reading Bea Johnson’s Zero Waste Home and feeling a little guilty about all the packaged waste I create. Meat? Wrapped in plastic. Cereal? In a box. Bea’s been able to get her family’s annual trash production to one quart per year! That’s about as much as I produce in a minute.

So while I’m not yet prepared to go foraging for Spanish moss in lieu of toilet paper and the electric deer from Christmas is still going strong on my balcony, I am on a mission to de-clutter and simplify my life (she said as she ordered yet another compulsive item from Anthropologie). I got this idea from my good friend Danielle at Cozycakes Cottage who has a bazillion followers so she must be doing something right: she is participating in a month-long de-cluttering challenge from another blogger.

Now, I happen to be a person who develops emotional attachments to pens (they have souls), so I’m cutting myself some slack: I’m going to do a half-month challenge, and invite you to do the same. For 15 days, you get rid of 7 things per day by recycling, selling, giving it away, or, as a last resort, disposing of it.

I’ve begun.

It’s addictive.

And I’m realizing what a gluttonous lifestyle I lead, in a home full of things that could be enjoyed by someone else.

So here we go:

Day 1: I gave away 10 items of clothing — 6 tops, 3 skirts and a dress to my cousin Renee and her daughter Amy. All gently used, cute items that I never wear that look completely adorbs on them.

Are you in? Let me know what you’re giving away today!