2024 Destash Dare to be Bare!

[zanzibar138]

My lesson? It is a complete worthless waste of my time and energy to "sell" books at 46 cents each, or even the 86 cents a book Frugal Muse gave me. I find it insulting. In addition, it takes the about 2-3 minutes per book where I have to sit around and wait for my paltry payment. I don't need the money so I would rather just donate all my books to the library. That way, I make someone's day when they book scout the library book sale and find one of my Amazon treasures that I am too lazy to sell. I know that some folks would say, "Robin, a pittance is better than nothing." But for me, "Nothing is better than being taken advantaged of by being paid a pittance for valuable items.". YMMV.

Good news, though. I found out that the library has a place that I can drop books off easily on Thursday between 11-1, so I know where I will be in 2 days! Someone will be happy with the books I drop off and the library gets the profit instead of some slimy low-ball used bookstore.

I absolutely agree with this. For most of the items I'm getting rid of, it's not worth my time to try to sell them. Op shops have done VERY well out of me over the years!

 

[firefly_ris]

For some of this stuff, do you use Marketplace? Or eBay? Or something else? Trying to figure out the best place for clothes and stuff like that. I'm not big on someone coming to my house, and I'm really big on meeting them in public (hear too many stories of people getting robbed, shot, assaulted, whatever when they meet up someone they met on Facebook. So just trying to look for ideas.

I do a combo of Marketplace, eBay and donate. I don't own designer or high cost clothing so I never sell clothes. My mom sometimes has stuff like that which she successfully sells on ebay, though her main item is antiques. There is a church in town that operates a free clothing shop once a week and I mostly donate clothing to them. I have 3 growing kids and have an assortment of people I give their stuff to.

I do mostly porch pickup for Marketplace. I live in a small town of about 8k. Never had a problem. For lower cost items I leave right on the porch and they either venmo me or leave cash somewhere. Higher cost I am home for to hand off in person.

More specialty and higher cost items, I sell on ebay. I have a good supply of amazon and target boxes for packing. Just use my regular scale to estimate weight. I've been selling since 2001 and it's a lot simpler now than it used to be. International sales are so easy now because you just ship them to ebays international shipping center and they take care of the rest. Print my shipping label at home so it only takes less than 5 minutes to drop it off at the post office. My 90 day selling total at the moment is about $950. So it's worth it for me. Some months are very slow, others better.

 

[newski_mom]

Update for January -

Sold 11 things on local facebook trader page
Donated 3 boxes of DS's outgrown clothes and clothes I no longer wear - I didn't count these, but I'd guess at least 25 items per box

 

[WDW_fan_in_TX]

Do you donate T-shirts too? Or just dressy clothes? I have tons of T-shirts, probably 50, I don't wear anymore from when I used to work outside every day. Some in good condition. Some in not so good condition. But now that I have to dress up (collar and jeans), I don't have a need for that many t-shirts. And I haven't worn a bunch in the 18 months since we've moved up here.

Update for January -

Sold 11 things on local facebook trader page
Donated 3 boxes of DS's outgrown clothes and clothes I no longer wear - I didn't count these, but I'd guess at least 25 items per box

 

[barkley]

Do you donate T-shirts too?

do you have any local preschools or daycares? if so you might give them a call and see if they want them for the kids to put on when they paint and do other messy projects. we downcycle some of our old thrashed (or just unwanted) ones for messy outdoor projects-there's a small plastic bin in the laundry room and if we are going to be prone to getting messy we pull one from there to be tossed (not washing something with oil, gasoline, weed spray...on it). also use them as shop towels-wipe up the mess and toss it out. when our kids were little we would keep a couple in the car so if we got fast food they could put one of ours on to protect whatever they were wearing (great for roadtrips).

 

[tinkerbellandpeterpan]

Trashed a broken laundry basket, another broken beach umbrella (why the heck did we have 2 broken ones sitting in the basement for over a year!), a used up candle and an old stained hoodie that wasn't going to come clean. Sent a birthday card from my stash I have on hand. Every little bit helps.

I'm going to put the donation bag in the car tonight and drop it off at goodwill on my way home from work tomorrow. I have one large black bag and will try to go through some clothes tonight to get some more outta here!

 

[zanzibar138]

Do you donate T-shirts too? Or just dressy clothes? I have tons of T-shirts, probably 50, I don't wear anymore from when I used to work outside every day. Some in good condition. Some in not so good condition. But now that I have to dress up (collar and jeans), I don't have a need for that many t-shirts. And I haven't worn a bunch in the 18 months since we've moved up here.

I donate everything that's in good condition. I know I buy t-shirts from op shops, and I would be SUPER excited to find a Disney one if you had any of those in your stash. T-shirts that are a bit worn do make good rags, and there are also lots of upcycling ideas. At the end of the day though, I really don't need that many rags, and I know I'll struggle to get around to actually doing any of the upcycling, so any t-shirts (or any other clothing) I have in not-so-good condition gets tossed. Just the other day I finally threw out one of my favourite pairs of pyjamas that was getting quite threadbare and the elastic was going.

 

[robinb]

The basement guys come on Monday. I donated hundreds of books to the local library today! I still have about 100-200 to go, but that can be done later as those are out of the way. In the process of clearing books, I also filled 4 30-gallon garbage bags and added to our recycling container. I have so much left over cardboard that we'll have to make a special trip to the garbage/recycling center to get rid of it. But ... 90% of my old Amazon books have been processed and I am ready to work on organizing the rest of the basement to make room for the people to do their job.

 

[newski_mom]

Do you donate T-shirts too? Or just dressy clothes? I have tons of T-shirts, probably 50, I don't wear anymore from when I used to work outside every day. Some in good condition. Some in not so good condition. But now that I have to dress up (collar and jeans), I don't have a need for that many t-shirts. And I haven't worn a bunch in the 18 months since we've moved up here.

I do donate t-shirts as long as they are in good condition. I need to go through DHs tshirts. He gets them all the time on vacations and never wears them. I probably need to focus on getting him to stop buying them in the first place lol!

 

[dpswift]

Dropped off 3 bags of donations. Had planned to list a few things for sale but haven’t because things haven’t been selling. Plan to take a few minutes now to go through some things

 

[barkley]

starting up my dvr pile of new 2 hour episodes of 'hoarders'-gonna get inspired!!!

 

[dpswift]

starting up my dvr pile of new 2 hour episodes of 'hoarders'-gonna get inspired!!!

I used to watch occasionally for inspiration. I don’t know if I still have my one dvd of it because I got rid of the majority of our dvds last year

 

[tinkerbellandpeterpan]

Killed it today! 3 garbage bags of clothes and assorted other items out for donation. 1 garbage bag of stuff out for garbage. Got my mom motivated. She is with me on the the 5 items a week on garbage night plan.

 

[dpswift]

Killed it today! 3 garbage bags of clothes and assorted other items out for donation. 1 garbage bag of stuff out for garbage. Got my mom motivated. She is with me on the the 5 items a week on garbage night plan.

That is great. As with everything a lot is just getting into the habit. Today was our garbage day. I had planned on getting some things together after work yesterday, but my shift was extended and I was too tired. I did however make a point of throwing several extra things in the trash this morning

 

[tinkerbellandpeterpan]

Packed up donation of a hand mixer and all the attachments (at least 4-5 of them). Donating 2 of 5 mini spatulas I have. Certainly no one needs 5. Probably do not need 3, but I will see in a couple weeks if I want to let another one go (it's not like they take up that much room). Plus another 3/4 filled garbage bag of clothes for donating. Throwing out a fabric laundry hamper that our cats have destroyed by scratching and tossed an old dried out canister of Clorox wipes that were back in the recesses of my bathroom under sink cabinet. Staying committed to at least 5 things going out on garbage night.

 

[zanzibar138]

I'm liking this 'throw out x number of things on garbage day every week'. Might give that a go!

 

[dpswift]

So far this weekend I have gotton rid of 2 bags of trash and 2 items for donation. I am not participating in the family Super Bowl festivities this year so I might get a little more done.

 

[zanzibar138]

A friend of ours was moving from a fully furnished unit to an unfurnished one. We took him a fridge and a couch which we no longer had any use for, and the washing machine from my grandparents. Wins all round!

Up to 45 items for the year now, but those ones were good to get out of the way being such large items that were taking up a lot of space!

 

[dpswift]

Overall I am happy with what I have accomplished this weekend. I got at least 3 bags of easy decision. Garbage out. 2 items for donation and several boxes broken down for recycling. We had been keeping the boxes in DDs room in case we needed to send something out.

 

[dpswift]

Didn’t get a lot done this past weekend.however got a full kitchen bag out of the bathroom this morning. It was trash day. I know I should have done more but it is something. Hopefully now that it is slowly starting to stay light later DD and I can spend 30 minutes each night working