Selfish Moneymaking Schemes

I have a confession to make; I didn’t write any letters the other day. Don’t worry, they’ll still find their way to you all in the end, but I got sidetracked and had my day eaten by the offer of free listings on eBay for a week. With a storage cupboard that wants emptying and a bank account that wants filling, I figured it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

I only just ‘discovered’ eBay this summer. Every year I do a massive tidy up and clearout of my room/flat come the beginning of summer. At first this was inflicted upon me by my highly organised and clutter-hating mother, but as the years went by I began to see the genuine logic behind it. If you know what you have, and where you keep it, and what you’re missing, you save a lot of time and money searching for and purchasing things. And getting rid of things you don’t use, need or want anymore makes room for more exciting stuff!

Now, I freely admit that I ‘horde’ way more than I should do – a trait of my father’s that somehow survived despite the ardent spring cleans of my youth. But I can let go of most things eventually. Usually I just give the items that don’t make the cut away to charity, but this year I found myself particularly hard up, so I decided I’d at least try selling some of them before I passed them on. Incidentally, it’s amazing how much more willing I was to part with things once there was potentially money involved!

My first batch of sales, back in June, went well; managed to shift a fair few unwanted items and the admin process went relatively smoothly. Everything that didn’t sell went into a bag and I fully intended to donate it, but I just never got around to lugging it into town. So, when the offer of free listings came up, and with a few weeks still to kill before uni, I decided to give it all one last chance to sell, just to save my back you know... (As an aside, if you're selling books, movies or CDs or anything with an ISBN type number, you're financially much better off selling it on Amazon, I've discovered.)

Of course, I forgot how time consuming and fiddly the actual eBay listing process can be! Two long evenings later and I’m still not quite done. Admittedly this is because I kept letting myself get distracted, but it’s still taken a while. I hope to finish up the list tonight, and resume normal programming shortly. (And I will write letters/emails then, I promise, so continue to keep an eye out!)

I’ve actually once again scribbled this out by hand at work (busy, the Debenhams complaints line is not), and typed it up at home, otherwise I wouldn’t have had time to even blog today probably. It’s a pity I can’t manage my eBay account while I’m at work, as that would kill two birds with one stone! Anyways, I’m off to tend my inventory guys. Wish me sales and I’ll hopefully be back soon to report on my success.