Turning Your Rubbish into Riches

I am sure that most of us have items in our house that we no longer want, need, or use. I have recently spent some time completing some much-needed “spring cleaning” in my home. I found that I had four categories of items in my home; keep, trash, giveaway, or sell. It is pretty easy to handle the items designated as “keep” or “trash” but it can be overwhelming trying to figure out what to do with the items that you want to giveaway or sell.

After my cleaning, I decided to try two different ways to dispose of the items that I wanted to just get out of my house. They had no real value to me but I felt they would be useful to someone else. I gave quite a large number of items to charity. This is typically the easiest way to give things away but it can be a chore arranging for pick-up and remembering to leave the items out on the scheduled pick-up day.

Then I discovered the local Freecycle listserv in my area. This is a group of people who believe in recycling their unwanted items to others rather than filling more landfills. Admittedly, there are some really super-serious “Freecyclers” who will try to recycle anything through the listserv. However, for the most part, you will find that there are many gracious people out there who can really use the items you have no need for. I have found the people that have received my freecycled items have been grateful and appreciative. It is an easy way to get rid of unwanted items in your home and it makes you feel good to help someone out at the same time. To find out if there is a local Freecycle group in your area, visit www.freecycle.org.

Now I was ready to move on to the items that I thought someone might actually pay for. I was not looking to retire on the money that I received from these items but if I could recoup some cash at all, I would be happy. My neighborhood had a community yard sale and I participated in that. In general, the yard sale went well but if you hate to haggle over every little low priced item it may not be the best way to go.

For the larger items that did not sell at the yard sale, I decided to list them on the local Craig’s List. You can find the local group on www.craigslist.org. Craig’s List turned out to be a big success for me and now I often sell things for friends and family on there. Craig’s List is a great resource for many different things from buying and selling things to locating employment or housing. It is free to advertise and makes your ad available to thousands of people.

After going through this process, I no longer dread cleaning out an area in my home. I know there are lots of different ways I can get rid of the clutter in my home. They do take a little bit of extra work on my part but these days I would rather see things go to a new home than go straight to the dump.