Declutter Challenge October Update: Successes and Failures

I am really glad that I jumped on the declutter wagon again this month and moved additional items out of the house, but it is really hard to keep up with my declutter challenge when there is so much other stuff going on!

First, I have to talk about my failures: I didn't get around to selling anything on Craigslist as I had planned. I find Craigslist overwhelming to deal with. You post your item for sale, and then you have to comb through your email to find the responses. Typically at least one response is from someone who is talking about something you aren't selling (ex. someone was interested in my stove once when I was offering some free tickets to a consignment sale...????). It's difficult to determine who is really interested vs. someone who isn't serious. Some people want to meet you at a location in between, and then they don't show up, or want to meet at a strange time, such as early in the morning (horror stories from friends).

I haven't figured out a smooth way to deal with Craigslist Chaos, so I'm reluctant to do a lot with it. If I am going to sell something on Craigslist before the end of the year, it will have to be this upcoming weekend. Stay tuned next month to find out if I get motivated...or not!

I had an opportunity to sell items at a friend's yard sale over the holiday weekend, which would have been a great way to move the items I am dreading posting on Craigslist. Unfortunately, I had too much going on that weekend and I had to bypass the opportunity. I love that people are getting together and sharing yard sale opportunities, though, and I look forward to participating next time!

I had a steady, tiny stream of book sales on Half.com this month. I am going to count only the transaction that I already received payment for, and count the 3 other sales for November, which means that my Half.com total is $7.75.

I also pushed myself to consign approximately 100 items, and sold over 60 of them, with the rest being donated by the consignment sale to several different organizations. (You can read here about how I track what I sold/didn't sell without picking up the unsold items) Since most items were small and I priced them to sell, I earned just $121.13, significantly less than the big earnings I saw at the spring sale, but better than nothing!

I scraped up 11 items to sell on Ebay, including a few seasonal items I had put aside earlier in the year, thinking they would sell better in the fall. The list included a few Halloween costumes, NFL Football kids' clothes (Steelers stuff, if you care to know), and some little baby shoes, in addition to my newborn cloth diapers, which were so cute and so little they were hard to let go, but sell them I did.

10 of 11 items sold (a couple for only 99 cents, but at least I found someone who wanted and could use the item!) and I made a total of $107.45 after shipping and fees. I have another short list of items for Ebay to sell in November, because so far I find it to be the most convenient way to connect nicer items to people who want them and can use them.

All of these totals added together bring me to $236.33 for the month of October. Two more months to go, and I can tell already that December is not going to be a big month. :) It's time to shift gears and get organized for the holidays!

Check out additional declutter reports at The Finer Things in Life!

Yard Sale and Consignment Deja Vu

I'm having somewhat of a deja vu experience this month. Just like this past spring, I am participating in a consignment sale and a yard sale all in the same week!

The consignment sale is a set event that occurs twice a year, and I am exhaustedly pleased to report that I pulled together just under 100 items to take to the sale: kids' clothing, snow bibs/boots, videos/DVDs/toys, and a few other miscellaneous items, including those items pictured above--except for the 18-wheeler truck, which was withdrawn from the sale by my packrat son. (Has he played with this truck in the past 2 years? No! Will he play with it again after today? No! Sigh.)

The Yard Sale is actually something a friend of mine is putting together, and she has kindly invited others to sell items at her sale. I have just a few larger items in mind to add to the sale, but it will save me having to list items on Craigslist and arrange individual pickups, etc.

I'm glad to have these extra motivators to keep me focused on Stuff Elimination, because I've been looking at my calendar and there is a lot going on in the next few months. I want to continue purging through the end of the year to complete my Declutter Challenge, but I have to be realistic about the lack of available time and energy I'm going to have to devote to the project. It is probably realistic to predict that October is going to be my last 'big' selling month of the year.

Summer Recap and Back to School... and Work

Our full school schedule is now starting its third week (we start school late around here, and preschool starts even later), so it's time for life to return to some semblance of normal.

I was expecting my summer to be productive time spent continuing my decluttering quest, in addition to keeping my kids entertained with fun summer activities. Based on the amount of decluttering I completed (very little), I need to adjust my expectations.

All I wanted to do this summer was hang out with my kids. We did numerous non-productive mundane activities, including swinging on our rope swing, chewing bubble gum and learning to blow bubbles, and occasionally making it all the way to the swimming pool. We also celebrated both kids' birthdays and went to the beach twice. For some reason I was expecting to get more done despite the fact that my kids were involved in fewer activities during the day. They were always around, standing between me and their coveted piles of stuff saying, "MOM, DON'T SELL MY BABIES!"

I did have some house projects going on; our masonry and landscaping project took most of the summer, and we had some electrical work done. It took a lot of time and effort to stay on top of these projects (which were hired out to contractors, I wasn't even doing the work myself!) as well as doing the regular tasks that need to be done around the house.

Now, at least I know what to expect of myself next summer: not very much! After my declutter challenge is over, I'll change to a different focus; instead of getting rid of items year round, I'll focus on purging once in the spring and once in the fall.

This means that I need to focus on October as my next big declutter month. My basement is filling up as I recently did Birthday Declutters on my son's room (1 large container full) and my daughter's room (4 boxes!). If it doesn't get decluttered in October, it probably won't leave the house until next year, as I already know I won't have a lot of spare time to work on the project in November and December.

So, we'll see what I can complete next month!

Declutter Challenge July Update: Easing Back Into It

Something is better than nothing! I love looking at a nice pile of packages, ready to be shipped out the door. It's so satisfying!

I'm distinctly relieved to report that I made my sales goal for July. It wasn't an amazing month, but at least there are 6 fewer items in my home that have now been connected with others who have a use for them.

It wasn't until halfway through the month that I was able to focus on selling some items. I was getting ready to go out of town and didn't have a lot of time to work with, so I decided to do what has become easiest for me: selling on Ebay. To make things work with my schedule, I reduced my auctions to be 5 days long instead of the standard 7 days. I also started all 5 of my auctions at $.99 to attract as much interest as possible.

There seems to be a psychology to starting auctions at $.99 which makes items attract bids more than other items that have a higher starting price. People can't resist a great deal, apparently, and bid on the items, which increases the perceived demand for the item, or some such. At least I've noticed that my $.99 items get a lot of attention and sometimes sell for higher than identical items' Buy it Now prices. (Also, Ebay collects lower fees on $.99 auctions, so it's win-win unless the item isn't in demand and the item ends up selling for $.99!)

My total sales amount on Ebay (after shipping, fees, etc.) was $119.28. I also sold a book on Half.com (even easier than listing items on Ebay!) and made $6.05, bringing my total for July to $125.33!

All of my buyers paid promptly except for one, so I had to haul that package along to the beach while waiting for payment. I prepared the package and used the Wifi connection at the beach house to obtain the address--and the location of the nearest post office. It was a bit of a pain, but I'm glad I took the trouble to make the sales despite being crunched for time.

Maybe one of these days I will actually sell something on Craigslist. I haven't figured out the secret yet, but I hope to make some attempts in August.

August is Toy Purge Month in our household, due to upcoming birthdays. I don't know if I will actually get around to selling many of the toys, but I hope to get a good supply together to sell/donate/get out of my house this fall!

Another area I need to focus more on is recycling. I have various appliances and other random items that need a new home one way or another that I hope to get to in the coming weeks/months.

Visit The Finer Things in Life to fine more decluttering inspiration!

Fitness Goals Update: July

Despite being out of town for a total of 9 days in July, I managed to drag myself to aerobics class a total of 11 times, which works out to about every other day. It was 5 less that my goal to attend 16 classes and 'win' the flip-flop bag set. Supplies are still available, so maybe I will be able to win them just a bit late if I can go enough times this week. (Need to go 3 more times...)

Total Attended in July: 11 classes

Total for 2010 as of July 31st: 84 classes

I would really like to get ahead with my class count in August so that I have a bit more breathing room when things get really busy this fall. Things working in my favor:

• August is a long month with 5 weekends if you count this past weekend.
• We are NOT going out of town this month. (Whew! That's what hurts my totals the worst, I think)
• I might make it to some morning classes as I have been waking up earlier and feeling restless. (Attending 7 AM aerobics class is a rare and amazing event for me.)

I have hopes that this will be a great fitness month for me, not only for the reasons above, but also because I have started Counting Calories for the first time in my life. Ever. I won't go so far as to call it a 'diet', more an Increased Awareness of portions. I'm currently using Daily Plate, which seems to be working well thus far (for the past 3 days). I'm hoping that this food record will help me to pinpoint what I need to eat in order to keep my energy levels consistently high, since that has been a problem for me occasionally.

Fitness Goal Update for May

I should first confess that I skipped reporting on my personal fitness challenge for April. I fell behind, and I kept meaning to write about it, then May happened, and it fell by the wayside.

But I persisted! Despite the fact that both teenage neighbors who were available to watch my kids so I could work out mid-afternoon and be home for dinner... weren't available anymore. (One plays sports, and one's parent decided she couldn't do any babysitting until school lets out. Argh!) Then I had the bright idea to hold a yard sale and send items to a consignment sale at the same time. Then we went out of town two weekends in a row for a total of 8 days. Lastly, my son was having a minor problem at school and I felt like I needed to pay extra attention to him to try to figure out what was bothering him. (Issue Resolved, thank goodness.)

All this added up to my attending my class only 8 times in April, bringing my total in April for the year to 47; 3 shy of the 50 that I needed to be on track to meet my 150 class goal for the year. It took everything in me to keep going in May to try to make up at least a little of my slacking off:

Total Attended in May: 12

Current 2010 Total: 59 (Not including the class I attended yesterday so that I could look up how many times I attended in May so that I could make this report!)

The next challenge is an attendance game for the months of June and July. I am supposed to attend at least 30 classes total during this time. This works out fine to 15 classes per month, but the catch is that I will be out of town in July, a potential total of 9 days, possibly more. 31 days minus 9 days equals 22 days in which to attend 15 classes. If I wasn't breaking down these numbers into months and weeks, it would be much harder to figure out what I need to do to stay on track for the year. Plan for June: Go! Every day!

Declutter Challenge April Update: The Big Report

April may be the biggest report of the year, due to my wild idea to prepare items for a consignment sale AND hold a yard sale at the same time! If that was not enough, I also had some books sell on Half.com, AND couldn't stop myself from listing just a few items on Ebay. It's been a busy month!

This month I decided to try out Ebay's 'Buy It Now' selling feature: putting some items up for sale at a flat price and making them available for 30 days. I have some nice items I thought might sell well, but that were not necessarily something that people would be excited enough to bid on and wait for an auction to end. Sometimes when I've been shopping on Ebay I've been drawn to items that I could just buy instantly--when I didn't have time or patience to wait for the auction to end to see if I won the item... or not. I sold two of the items within the first week, making at total of $20.05 after fees and shipping. Two additional items are still listed for sale for another week or so, and one of them has already sold so I will count that one in my total for May.

One of these items was a Pampered Chef Tool Turn-About that I never ended up using. I tried to sell it at a yard sale three years ago for $5, and it didn't sell. On Ebay it sold for $15! This is a great example of how certain items are more in demand depending on the marketplace. Probably few of the people at the yard sale were interested in Pampered Chef, but online I had access to many more people who were looking for brand-specific items.

I also sold two additional books at Half.com. My current inventory there is 4 books, so selling two is a big deal! I earned $15.05.

Our Yard Sale was a fun event, and profitable, too! Most of the items we sold were small household things that we no longer needed, plus a few larger items: a crib, 3 vacuum cleaners of varying functionality, an old large television set, old computer speakers, etc. Amazingly, we made $270.25! I will subtract $10 to cover costs for posterboard, marker, and stickers that I bought. This was the only cost as the advertising was all free!

Lastly, I received my check from the consignment sale, and it's time to announce the winner of my Giveaway. After many hours of preparation of our nicest reusable kid and baby items (and a bunch of cheap books), I was thrilled to recieve a total of $263.63 from the sale! This means that Alyssa is the lucky winner of a $25 Amazon Gift Card! (She guessed $261.00, long before my check arrived in the mail. Amazing!) Alyssa has been emailed to announce the win, and I need to hear back from her in the next 48 hours to issue the prize. Thanks to everyone who guessed!

April Declutter Challenge Grand Total: $558.98

As always, this amount will be applied to my loan. I'm thrilled with my progress as I have paid a total of $1,185.93 so far this year.

Does this mean that my goal to earn at least $100 per month is too low? I've been thinking about this, and I've decided that it doesn't need to be higher. The goal is enough to motivate me to sell a few things each month without feeling extreme pressure. I think I will be happy to earn a smaller amount for the month of May. I still need to finish putting my basement back together. I'm also trying to focus on a few other projects this month and we have a lot of weekend activities. I like that my goal gives me some flexibility to have a lighter month when I need it!

ETA: You can read about other's decluttering progress over at The Finer Things in Life!

Yard Sale Preparation: The Purge Process

It's time to go through the house and remove any and all items that are headed for the garage and consignment sales! I've already procrastinated by doing all the laundry I can find; this way I'll be less likely to 'miss' something I should have pulled.

At the same time I can assess what I need to replace clothing-wise for my children who seem to double in size every time I turn my back. I already know that my daughter needs a whole new summer wardrobe as she has outgrown everything she owns.

Here is my list of household hotspots I need to hit and clear out. I'll check back regularly and cross out what I've completed.

• My closet and drawers
• Daughter's closet and drawers
• Son's closet and drawers
• Linen Closet
• Large kitchen cabinet and Pantry
• Buffet in dining room (aka Craft Storage)
• Toy Cabinets, DVD Cabinet
• Basement Play Room (shudder)
• Storage Room

It's a purging time of year, and MoneySavingMom is hosting a declutter challenge, where you can find links to others' decluttering progress.

Declutter Challenge March Update: Building Ebay Experience

I haven't forgotten that it's past time to report on my decluttering progress in March. After a busy month in February... blah blah blah. I toyed with the idea of listing some items on Craig's List, but ultimately I decided to focus on Ebay listings.

I followed the strategy I had worked out and it went well. Listing auctions with no reserve on Ebay makes me anxious, and many people prefer to avoid the fear of an item selling for a low price by raising the starting bid price or pricing the item as Buy it Now. I've observed that auctions with higher starting bid prices appear to attract fewer bidders. I could sell items using the Buy it Now feature, but I wasn't sure exactly how much my items would be worth in the end. One buyer actually contacted me about an auction, wondering if I would be willing to change it to a Buy it Now transaction. I'm glad I didn't because the item ended up selling for more than the buyer would have offered.

I also struggled with the mail rates. The cost to mail the larger items were easy to justify, but the cost to mail some of the smaller items across the country was exhorbitant. In some cases the flat rate envelopes and boxes worked well, but in other cases the value of the item I was trying to sell wasn't worth how much it would cost to safely ship it anywhere in the country. I ended up added additional shipping options on several transactions.

In the end, I sold 7 of the 11 items, resulting in $155.47 in sales after Ebay and Paypal commissions and fees, which I've finally figured out!* Several of the small items sold for only $.99, so I'm not always right about what items will be in demand. I didn't mind very much because I had great success on other transactions, and I still moved items that were no longer useful to my family out of my house and into a home where the item is needed.

I also sold an additional book through Half.com, making $5.59 after commissions and fees. I only have a small handful of books listed, but it's nice to every once in a while pop a book in the mail to someone who would like to own it.

That's all I sold! It was a smaller month, but still well ahead of my earning goal--I earned a total of $161.06.

As for my other decluttering projects, I could have made more progress. The pile for Goodwill that I made when decluttering the basement laundry room is still in the house, unfortunately. I did successfully recycle my worn, flaking, non-stick cookware. April is set to be a high export month due to the yard/consignment sale strategy.

*You might recall from last month that I wasn't sure what my Ebay fees were. After a bit of research, I figured out that my Ebay fees totaled $18.26, and were not paid before I posted my numbers for last month. Paypal must also be paid when you are a seller--I'm learning so much!--and their total fees were $8.60, but these fees were deducted from each transaction as they were processed. This all means that I overstated my Ebay earnings for February by $18.26, so I've deducted that amount from the loan payment that I'm sending for March. This is a bit complex to keep track of, yet another reason I am limiting my Ebay activity to 1 week per month! I don't know how accountants keep up with this stuff!

My Basement Organizing Challenge Results

I was really inspired by 'I'm an Organizing Junkie's' call to enter her 28 Day Organizing Challenge! I hate my basement and I've been procrastinating for over 5 years on organizing everything so that I can use the room as a functional space. I spend as little time as possible down there running laundry through the machines, and that's it! (Except for occasionally adding to the scary piles that were already there.) Here are my before pictures:

I jumped at the chance to enter my basement laundry room in this contest. I was hopeful that if I had a deadline and the incentive of blogging about my progress, that would light my fire. I even had extra opportunity to work on the project when the great snowstorms of 2010 passed through our area, trapping the entire family at home. Easy, right?

Unfortunately, I struggled to stay motivated about this project. I didn't do ANYTHING to move the project along until late in the month. I got off to a good start posting some sorting strategies that I planned to put into action, but then I would go to the basement and find that there was so much stuff everywhere and nowhere to move anything around. I would stand in the middle of the room and stare blankly at the space, unsure where to begin, what to move where, how to organize things... I was discouraged and lost!

I finally figured out that I needed to take a step back even further than just sorting all of our random junk, and come up with a vision for the basement laundry room space. Instead of focusing on what to store where and how to categorize things, I needed to focus on the room's functionality. One of the room's functions is as a place to sort out all of our random junk! I couldn't do that (or anything else!) because I didn't have space to work. First I needed to make the space functional, THEN I could do some sorting.

These are the activities that I need my basement laundry room to accommodate, in order of frequency/priority:

• Laundry storage (dirty items waiting to be cleaned), sorting, and folding
• Space to store, sort, and organize items to be sold, donated, or recycled as part of my personal Declutter Challenge. (including shipping supplies)
• Space to prepare items for several yard/consigment sales coming up in the next few months (including hanging racks for consignment clothing)
• Gift Wrap/Shipping storage and wrapping space
• Storage/access to scrapbooking supplies/projects
• Access to old computer to FINALLY finish moving old files/data to new computers before donating.

 To be fair, the room must also serve several functions for my husband:

• Accessible tool and household equipment storage (any cabinets I don't mention contain his things, and everything hanging on the wall is his--he's likes to hang stuff.)
• Accessible seating storage (we have large families that sometimes require folding chair seating)
• Accessible Beer storage :)

Our goal was to remove everything from the room that didn't serve one of the functions listed above. We moved some furniture around and ended up with the space you see here:

I feel the need to explain that the cabinets you see here are our old kitchen cabinets and counters that were moved down to the basement during a kitchen remodel years ago. We just lined the cabinets up and stacked the counters on top--they are in no way 'installed' but they provide a great deal of flexible storage and work space. My husband hung some of the upper cabinets in this room as well as in the storage room beyond.

We kept the old computer at the end of the counter so that I can finish preparing it to be donated. We now have wireless access so if I am listing an item online, I can do so right here at the counter--now that there is a safe place to set the laptop computer down! The counter is where I can store current projects: items I am planning to sell or donate, or items that need to be sorted and organized before being stored away in storage.

As you see above, one of my favorite storage solutions is the card table that slides under the counter top when not in use; it can be pulled out to serve as a laundry folding space, gift wrap/shipping space, or extra tabletop space if I am working on a large project. Underneath the card table we have two old laundry hampers that contain unwashed but sorted clothing that is waiting to be laundered--darks in the brown hamper, lights in the beige hamper, of course. I started folding laundry here even before we finished organizing the space!

This corner above previously contained my two hanging racks shoved behind a large box so that I couldn't access and move the racks. We've placed several old dressers here instead; the smaller one contains my husband's stuff. We set a cabinet on top of the larger grey one; together they contain gift wrap/shipping supplies and ribbons, bubble wrap, small shipping boxes, greeting card files, etc.There is a gift wrap storage container next to it for rolled gift wrap. The cabinet above our brown dresser holds our laundry supplies.

 

The photo above shows that my hanging racks are now stored where the grey dresser used to be, and the space around the furnace/water heater is now clear of clutter, except for the folding tables and chairs. We can use this space as a holding area for future donation piles. There is plenty of space so that I can now pull the racks out when prepping clothing for consignment, as shown below:

Here are my responses to Orgjunkie's Challenge Questions:

1. What was the hardest part of the challenge for you and were you able to overcome it?

I was having so much trouble getting started on this challenge that I truly thought I was going to submit a 'humor' post about strategies for Procrastination! Once I took a step back and focused on my vision for the room and what I needed to do to make it functional, it sparked all sorts of ideas, and the plans flew into place incredibly fast--most of the work was done over a few days.

 2. Tell us what kind of changes/habits you have put into place in order for your area/room to maintain its new order?

•  Dirty clothes will no longer be dumped in the middle of the room to wait to be cleaned. (My husband is estatic.)
• When we are not actively working on a project, we will put the project away (folding table stored, wrapping/shipping supplies put away, hanging racks stored against the wall under a dust sheet, saleable items stored in a container, etc.)
• I will add the room to the 'cleaning routine' of the household, because now there are surfaces to dust/clean and visible floors to sweep/vacuum rather than piles of dusty junk everywhere! 

 3. What did you do with the “stuff” you were able to purge out of your newly organized space?

Items removed from the room included a large pile of worn clothing, bedding, and baby equipment, all headed for Goodwill (You can read about what they'll do with it here.), a baby crib that our children barely slept in and a large plastic basketball hoop (both headed for Craigslist via The Garage), and a slew of gift bags hoarded over 5 years--we will never need this many gift bags!--also donating to Goodwill. I also recycled a bunch of worn cardboard boxes. We haven't sorted the Goodwill pile yet, but here is a preview of next weekend's project :) I hope to add to the pile even more before then!

I sorted a number of books, toys, and miscellanous items into storage containers and boxes and stacked them in the storage room. I will pull each one out as time permits to continue those decluttering projects as outlined in my personal Declutter Challenge. Here is a picture of the storage room to prove that I didn't just shove the mess into a different room! ;)

 4. What creative storage solutions were you able to introduce in order to create additional space as well as establish some limits and boundaries?

As I mentioned in my original post, my goal was to organize this room using only items that we already owned. We were successful!

I love that we were able to move various furniture pieces around the room to maximize storage space where we need it--including pulling a cabinet out from under the countertop to place on top of the dresser. We then slid a large box into the empty space and now I have a place to collect worn/outgrown clothing until I have a chance to decide whether to consign or donate each item.

I also like the shallow drawers of the gray dresser, which are perfect for storing ribbons and other wrapping/shipping items. Before I had little stashes of gift/shipping supplies in several different places, but now everything is consolidated in one place so I can easily see that I have plenty of supplies--no need to run out and purchase more!

Another neat thing that we did was repurpose the baking sheet cabinet (under the old computer) as a great place to store flattened shipping boxes.

5. Why do you think you should win this challenge?

Well, I won't win if it's a beauty contest--my poor basement is not the most aethestically pleasing! I didn't have time or budget to paint and stencil the furniture or add any deliciously cute storage containers to the space. ;)

 I hope that the judges will consider my space for how far it has come; from being a complete wreck of a room to being (for me) an inviting and efficient place to process my family's Stuff as it moves in and out of our lives. This 'Processing Area' is a space that I think every home could benefit from having; a space that I envision using this way for many years to come.

I really appreciate the opportunity to participate in this organizing challenge, and I look forward to checking out the results of everyone else's efforts!

-Michelle

Declutter Challenge February Update: Building Momentum

My Declutter Challenge really picked up some momentum this month! I felt like I barely got my feet wet in January with the two larger transactions I completed. This month I branched out a bit and had income coming in from all sorts of places!

• My first book shipment to Powell's Books in January went so well that I decided to put together a second shipment. This box contained fewer, less valuable books, but I made $19.75. Another easy transaction!
• I had a few books that Powell's was unwilling to purchase, but that I noticed were selling for worthwhile prices on Half.com. I listed three books, and one book sold, providing me $7.33
• I also got my feet wet with my very first listings on Ebay, which I was a little nervous about, but everything has gone smoothly thus far. I sold four small items as well as two dozen cloth diapers, which were in high demand and ended up selling for quite competitive costs. Total sales for February: $198.81 (I am so new I don't even know if Ebay has extracted their commission/payment from this amount. I may be accounting for that next month when I have more of a clue what I am doing!)
• I also had an unexpected opportunity to clear some broken bits out of my jewelry box and earn some cash for gold as described here. My total earnings to report: $140.00

 Total for February: $365.89!!!

The little things sure do add up! This total amount will be applied to my loan payment this month--over 3 times my goal payment.

 I'm hoping this momentum will continue into March, as I have a beautiful new basement workspace in which to organizing my declutter projects (I will reveal this soon!). I have some recycling research projects to complete, as well as a few more thoughts to share about selling on Ebay. A yard sale project is in the works, as well as a consignment sale.

These projects are keeping me busy, but it is very satisfying to connect all of these items to people and places where they will be needed and used. And not only did we gid rid of the sale items listed above, we also compiled a Goodwill donation, and I found a good home for a few small items.

Decluttering: Sell Your Gold!

Maybe one of the themes for my Declutter Challenge in February should be Super Small Items because this week I donated my unused contact lenses in addition to selling some old and broken bits of jewelry for cash!

What happened was this: I have a friend who has been out of work for a long while due to health problems. She is a single mother helping to finance her son's college education, so she is always trying to come up with strategies to come up with a little additional money to help make ends meet (at least make the ends come a bit closer anyway!).

She knows that I am trying to find a useful home for my unneeded stuff, so she suggested that I accompany her to sell some gold jewelry and other precious metals (sliver, pewter, etc.). I had a schedule conflict, so I found some broken gold necklaces and a few other items, popped them in a plastic bag, and sent them off with my friend to see what she could sell them for.

My friend has sold gold several different times now, and she has a few tips to share:

• Avoid offers that require you to send your gold through the mail. If at all possible, find a place where you can go in person to sell your gold. The buyers can make an offer for your pieces, and you can decide on the spot whether you want to sell them or not. You have less control over this process if you are sending your pieces through the mail, and could be more vulnerable to scams.
• Bring a friend. Some buyers offer to pay you an additional percentage for your pieces if you bring additional people with you. Your friends can also help you decide whether to accept the purchase offers or not. A third benefit of bringing your friends is that they can look over your unwanted items and perhaps offer them a new home. I had two pair of earrings that I sent which were too large for me and not my style at all. I wasn't even sure if they were made of gold or not. The type of gold they were made of was low quality, so the buyers declined to purchase them, but my friend really liked them, so I gave them to her. Better than having them return to clutter my jewelry box! Which leads to our next tip:
• Bring your items even if you aren't sure they are made of gold. You never know! On the other hand,
• Avoid selling sentimental items if you think you will regret it later. For several of my broken necklaces, I kept the pendant, but sold the broken chain. The pendants carry the sentiment, so I kept those. I avoided selling items that have sentimental value to our family. I may not use them right now, but my daughter may be interested in them when she is older.
• Think 'outside' the box when locating items to sell. My friend did this literally when she was looking through a small jewelry box one day for potential gold pieces. Suddenly it hit her that the actual jewelry box was made of sterling silver, and could be a sellable item! (She kept it for now, but she may sell it in the future if silver prices go up.)

We had a sucessful gold sale; the results of which will be included in my Declutter Challenge Report for February. I am still tallying up the rest of the items I sold this month, and I will put the February results up next week. Stay tuned!

I'm a Finalist!

I entered the Once a Month Mom and Dole Frozen Fruit Menu Planning Contest, and my menu plan was selected as one of the top three finalists! You can check out my menu submission and links to the proposed recipes here. You can vote for the menu you like best on the right side bar at Once a Month Mom once per day per computer until the contest closes on February 26th. (Please vote for me!)

Decluttering: The Basement Attack Plan

Since I've gone and entered my laundry room basement in an organizing contest, I thought I'd better sit down and come up with a plan of action--before I have to go put on some extra layers and actually spend some time down there!

I have a lot of stuff to move around, so I will start by sorting items into various piles, ideally in large, empty containers or boxes. My pile list:

• Goodwill
• Consignment Clothes
• Baby Equipment
• Baby Toys (no longer used)
• Other toys not currently in rotation
• Books
• Gift Wrap
• Photos, momentos, and scrapbooking items.
• Giftwrap, boxes, ribbons, gift bags, etc.
• Items to sell online
• Items to consign/sell at yard sale
• Extra Bedding
• Laundry Supplies
• Beverage Stockpile

Items in boldface are those that will require a permanent storage place, even in the actual items in that location rotate.

My next step is to find some boxes and bags to use so that I can start sorting everything out. After everything is sorted, I will need to clean the storage spaces and come up with a plan for where everything should be stored, then start putting everything where it belongs.

I think I am going to have some free time this weekend to work on this. We are supposed to host our Brunch, but we are expecting a foot of snow, and transportation comes to a standstill when it snows in this area, so we may have to reschedule.

To Ebay or not to Ebay... That is the Question

I have used Ebay occasionally over the years to purchase various items, and have had great experiences most of the time, but I've never tried selling before. I finally worked up the nerve and posted some items for sale last week. The good news is that I sold 3 items! The bad news... I didn't make very much money. I find myself wondering whether selling items on Ebay is worth it.

Not that I am trying to make a big profit, but I do want it to be at least somewhat financially worthwhile to count towards my challenge. The thought of profit helps especially when I have to go to the post office with two kids in tow. (They were very helpful and liked sliding the packages through the slot... they liked it so much they started trying to 'mail' everything in the room that wasn't nailed to the floor. Very exciting!)

The entire process of listing items on Ebay takes some getting used to. There are many decisions to make and many added features to decline so that you don't pay more for listing and shipping than you need to. I feel like I am wandering through the dark sometimes, unsure exactly what I need to do next, but ultimately I've been able to figure everything out in time. These first listings were guinea pigs; I wasn't really expecting them to do amazingly well. They did fine for practice purposes.

My hope is that I will become comfortable with the selling process so that whenever I accumulate a small pile of items to sell, I can list them without all the deliberation that I'm going through right now, and process the transactions more quickly. If I can get to this place (and make some profit!) I will be sure to let you know. Right now, I'm just not sure.

What I do know is that I am only going to sell items on Ebay when it seems to make sense. If I have an item that has particular value, is hard to find in stores (or no longer sold), is easy to ship, and is in demand for a hard-to-reach group of people who shop on Ebay, I will attempt to sell the item.

The perfect example of items that meet these criteria are our cloth diapers. Most are in nice condition, cannot be found in stores, will be easy to ship (stuff in box and go!), and I can reach a larger portion of the cloth diapering demographic on Ebay than say, at a yard sale. The yard sale would be a better location to sell, for example, a used baby toy that is available all over town. That sort of item is probably not worth shipping.

The one area that I feel like I am on top of the process for selling online is packaging!

This is my packaging material and envelope stockpile. Hopefully I'll be putting these items to good use in the new few months. I'll check in periodically and report how things are going. My decluttering/selling results for January are posted here.

Declutter Inspiration: I'm Entering my Scary Laundry Room in a Contest!

I admit it. I am a procrastinator. I have gotten amazing things done recently while working to avoid focusing on my Declutter Challenge for myself. I've planned brunches, planted paperwhites, read books, cooked delicious food, provided elaborate answers to my son's neverending questions... the list goes on and on.

'I'm an Organizing Junkie' is hosting a 28 Day Organizing Challenge for the month of February, complete with Before and After pictures. I immediately thought of a great set of Before pictures I just posted the other week: My Laundry Room Basement!

Just in case you haven't had the experience of viewing my Disaster Area:

Oh, my. I have my work cut out for me. It's so scary that I don't like to go into my basement unless absolutely neccessary, such as when we are all out of underwear and I need to do laundry (just kidding, I keep up with the laundry before underwear emergencies occur, but you get the idea!).

My main goal is to declutter in a more thoughtful way, but it occurs to me that it would make sense to simply go through the mass confusion in the basement and organize it based on which decluttering projects I plan on working on first. I have already wasted time to search randomly through the piles for my book and dish sales. It would be great to go through everything, sort it, and store it more efficiently so that I can focus more time in finding good homes for everything.

I'm sure that the organizing pros who enter this challenge will put together amazingly beautiful spaces and win all the wonderful prizes. I will be happy to just participate and be inspired to be more productive by the opportunity to share my experience (and 'After' pictures at the end of the month!)

My goals for the challenge:

• To use this blogging exercise to motivate me to work on this mess. Whomever is reading can hold me accountable to get at least *something* done!
• Rather than focusing on getting rid of all this stuff this month, I want to store and organize it so that I can find things when I am working on certain decluttering projects throughout the year without overlooking lost items.
• I want to clear a work space that I can use to sort/decluter, fold laundry, send packages/wrap gifts, etc.
• I want to work on all of these things without spending money. Organizing solutions are fun but since my focus this year is on decluttering, I want to get creative and see what I can do with what I already own.

This should be fun (except the part where I have to spend actual time in the basement. Argh!)

You can check out other 'Before' pictures and reports at orgjunkie.com. Enjoy!

My Freezer Cooking Day Disaster

I don't even know how to begin! I guess I'll start at the beginning.

Today's Freezer Cooking Day began as planned; I wanted to start by putting the chicken in the crock pot so that it could cook while my friend and I did all our other cooking. It would have been easier if the chicken had defrosted at least partially before I had to wrestle it into the crock pot . No problem; I cooked it for an hour or two and THEN I removed the packet of giblets inside. Note to Self: Start defrosting chicken in the fridge waaaay earlier!

My friend came over and our 3 year old girls hit it right off and played quite a bit on their own. They also joined us briefly in the kitchen to help me make quesadillas. I put out part of the ingredients and they made 2 for their lunch and a few more before they got bored and went to do something else, leaving me to (happily) finish assembly on my own. At least one thing worked well. I'm glad we were prepared for the girls to ask if they could help!

I went to the pantry to get some tomato paste and discovered that I didn't have any, although I had lots of sauce. I decided not to risk a substitution because the sauce is so much thinner in consistency. Because my friend was there, I could have dashed out to the store kid-free, but fortunately my neighbor had a spare can. Problem solved. But, there's more...

Apparently my sinus cold over the weekend reduced my ability to do math. When your triple a recipe that requires 3 eggs, that means you need 9 eggs. I had 11 eggs total, so I thought all was well, until later this afternoon when I made the pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and discovered I needed 4 eggs and only had 2 left. I had also planned to make a quiche, which requires... eggs! Ack! I was too embarrassed to go back to the first neighbor so I called a different neighbor and scored more eggs. Problem solved! But... there's more!

Since I plan to use the Salmon corks for this weekend's Brunch, I wanted to make them in the mini muffin pan. By tripling the recipe, I could get almost 4 batches of 24 mini salmon cakes out of the mixture, plenty for the party and then some. We ate part of the first batch with salad and clementines for a delicious lunch while I made the second batch. My friend left to pick up her son, and I baked the third batch. These are really easy to make, because you just combine the ingredients and bake. The challenging part is to wriggle them out of the mini muffin pan without messing them up, at least on the top. It was while I was unloading the third batch that I noticed this:

See that shiny black stuff? That stuff was NOT part of the ingredient list on my recipe. That is the non-stick bottom of my mini muffin pan.

Needless to say, I was quite alarmed--and it gets worse! I pulled the previous batches out of the freezer, and discovered tiny metal flakes on every single salmon cake. I had to call my friend to let her know that we had some 'extra minerals' included with our lunch, and I had to take every single cake that I had made...

and throw them away in the trash. (Oh, I can't look!)

So, the moral of the story is that non-stick mini muffin pans are bad. Very bad!

It's partially my fault because despite greasing the heck out of the pan, I have almost always had to use a little extra 'something' to loosen the sides of the muffin/quiche/tart/cookie and usually I have used a metal 'something' aka A Knife. Bad Idea! It damaged the non-stick layer, of course.

Anyway, the rest of the cooking went as smoothly as could be expected considering I was feeling pretty stressed out. Here is what I completed today:

• Quesadillas: The girls ate two of these for lunch and we have 8 more frozen for future meals.
• Cooked Whole Chicken: Measured, chopped, and packaged in two freezer bags for 2 upcoming meals. I also saved the chicken bones in my bone stash at the back of the picture and now I have enough bones to make bone soup! I also have that nice bowl of Chicken Stock, which I strained out of the crock pot. I will skim off most the fat as it cools then freeze the rest for a later meal.
• Pumpkin chocolate chip muffins: The packages in the back contain mini loaves that we delivered to my generous neighbors. I also have 12 10 8 ummmm... there are 6 regular sized muffins left now. (It wasn't me. Mostly.) In addition, I found some mini muffin baking liners to make mini muffins in my deteriorating pan (looks like about 30 are left) before I toss it into the trashcan with the salmon cakes. (Unless I figure out how to recycle the metal pan. Hmmm...)
• Salmon Cake Mixture: That pink stuff in the bowl is the salmon cake mixture (note: this is canned salmon which has already been cooked!) which I will refrigerate and cook as soon as I get another non-flaking mini muffin pan. Any suggestions on what type of pan I should get?
• My friend had much better Freezer Day Karma than I did. She made a batch of Lentil Stew that smelled delicious and baked a small Apple Crisp. (Not pictured as she took them home to her non-cursed kitchen!)

What I didn't get to: The Quiche--because I underestimated my egg requirements. Instead my friend made this lovely dish:

Just kidding. This picture is because things took a little more time due to the girls occasionally needing attention. My friend helped them create these cute dinosaurs out of play dough, I played in the dark bathroom with flashlights making shadows on the wall, and we both attended a tea party at which there was a lot of 'real' water being poured, which required a number of towels.

Despite the minor setbacks and metallic food poisioning, a good time was had by all! You can read more freezer day cooking reports here at MoneySavingMom (I'm waiting for the linky to go up!).

Wrapping up the Pantry Challenge

Well, I haven't figured out a use for the frozen mango yet, but pretty much everything else I hoped to use up from my pantry has moved out. I still did quite a bit of grocery shopping this month; at this point I don't have the data to state how much less than usual I spent. Considering that we usually eat at home and eat a variety of fresh, nutrient-rich foods, I only 'saved' on staples from the pantry, and even those I couldn't stop myself from stocking up on earlier in the challenge.

What have I learned?

• I can buy less and still make good meals for my family.
• With advance planning, I can anticipate using an item made for one meal into an ingredient for a second meal, perhaps more. Unless the family eats everything first, that is.
• It's worthwhile to Eat From the Pantry all the time: to periodically scan the pantry contents and build meals from what you have rather than bring all-new ingredients into the house.

It's been a fun challenge, but now I need to shift my focus back to my poor basement and plot some new ways to move some of this stuff out of my house!

Decluttering Challenge: The January Report

I haven't forgotten about my decluttering goals; in fact, I've made some progress in several areas, and it's time for an update!

• We donated a pile of items to Goodwill several weekends back... AND I have already started another pile of worn-out clothes where the old pile used to be! I will try to take a picture next time before my husband industriously bustles the pile out of the house. He did itemize the donation for our tax records before he swept everything away, good man that he is.
• I have finished paring down the books in the household. We still have plenty left, but I have shipped two boxes to Powell's. I have already recieved payment for the first box. I omitted one book from the original order because it didn't have a dust jacket, so I recieved a little less than they had quoted: $48.50. This was so easy to do and rewarding so fast that I lost no time putting together a second box! I highly recommend this as an easy way to sell your books.
• I have also put a few books up for sale on Half.com that appear to be in reasonable demand (aka Worth more than A Few Dollars) yet Powell's didn't want to buy them. The remainder of the books are together in storage, and I will pull them out in a few months to see if I can sell them locally--it doesn't make sense to me to ship them around the country if they are worth less than it costs to ship! Stay tuned...
• I had a few pieces of dishware that it was time to part with. Nothing antique or family-cherished, just a few pieces that do not match any of my other dishes and/or that I do not use. I contacted Replacements Ltd., a company that buys and sells pre-owned dishes and collectibles. It's a great place to find a dish that you need to replace, or sell dishes that you no longer need. They were willing to purchase 6 of my items, one for quite a competitive price. I carefully packed up the pieces and sent them off--double boxed!

• It should be worth it, though, as I am waiting for my payment of $89! I did have to pay shipping and insurance, which came out to $11, so my net is $78. I have additional pieces that they aren't buying currently which I will keep for now. Maybe I'll check back in a few months and see if they're purchasing those pieces again.  

$78 from Replacements plus $48.50 from Powell's (for the first box) brings my January total to $126.50. I am going to make my $100 loan payment, but I'm going to donate the $26.50 balance to a charity supporting the crisis in Haiti, which I haven't selected yet. It's a small amount, but every little bit helps, right? (ETA: I selected a charity and made the donation; you can read more about it here.)

It doesn't count for this challenge, but I also made a number of store returns and exchanges in January. In one case, I had ordered a pair of pajamas, top and bottom sold separately. They ran out of the top, but still sent the pants. The pants weren't very useful to me without the top they belonged with, so I sent them back. Sometimes it seems like more trouble than it's worth to return something, especially when it 'could' be useful, but I am trying to raise my standards and consciousness to only bring wanted, necessary, and useful items into the household. If something isn't exactly right or useful, I need to return them for a refund.

I still feel like I am just scraping the surface of the items that need to be moved out of my home and into the hands of people who will find them useful. Fortunately, coming up with this challenge and posting scary pictures of my basement for the world to see have really motivated me to think about ways to move this stuff along in creative ways. I look forward to sharing my plans and experiences as they happen throughout the year!

Pantry Challenge: Stretching to the end of the Month

Must. Not. Go. Grocery. Shopping!

It's time to dig around a little more and see what I can come up with to feed my ravenous family for the final 5 days of the Pantry Challenge. Fortunately I overplanned for this previous week and I didn't make every meal that I intended to make--we had leftovers more than I planned. I can move those meals over to the new week. My goal is to postpone grocery shopping until February 2nd.

The meals from last week or so that I didn't make were the mushroom barley soup (for lunches) and the salmon with the lime cilantro. I'll shuffle things around a little and get these things made for this week.

• Sunday: I'm going to move the shrimp pasta I was planning and make the salmon with lime cilantro soba noodles and spinach today. I am going to double this recipe to marinate the salmon, freezing half for a future meal. (The salmon is already frozen, I'll just combine the marinade w/the frozen salmon in a freezer bag and it will marinate when I move it to the fridge to defrost.)
• Monday: Chicken and Dumplings Casserole (as previously planned)
• Tuesday: Bouchons au Thon (tuna corks) with roasted potatoes and vegetable (as previously planned)
• Wednesday:  Chicken drumsticks with side and vegetable
• Thursday: Shrimp Pasta, finally picked a recipe! with salad (this recipe is reviewed here.)
• Friday: Breakfast for Dinner: Eggs, hash browns, bacon, vegetable, etc.
• Saturday: Leftovers
• Sunday: Bean and Cheese Quesadillas and a vegetable
• Monday: Lasagna (from the freezer) with salad and bread
• Tuesday: Grocery Shop! This will be great timing to shop for the Sunday Brunch.

I think we'll make it--so long as there aren't any surprises such as people eating food that I am hoping to use in a future meal!

The only item I need from the store for this meal plan are eggs. We made a frittata yesterday as we had some guests for a small brunch and exhausted our egg supply. Can I go to the store and buy only one item?

Be sure to check out other Pantry Challenge Updates at MoneySavingMom.com!