Decluttering

Well round two of eBay sales is now over, 5 parcels sent yesterday and another few to go tomorrow. Our experience has been very positive on the whole, most people pay within minutes of the end of the auction and we have had a few items sell for more than we paid!

This time we have a number of items for collection which has been quite amusing. We had just sat down with Kevin’s brother Phil yesterday as two people turned up at the same time to collect ladders and a camping table. Our guest was very amused by our ongoing garage sale! We are due another 4 people this evening from all over the local area to collect dive cylinders, camping stoves etc. It’s interesting to meet the people who buy your things and inevitably it comes to a conversation about what it is we are doing that we are selling everything off. We even had one guy who was peering in the garage to see what else was on offer!

Our other great find has been Amazon used books, we found it inadvertently when copying a description to post some books onto eBay. It takes about 30 seconds to list each one and you can see the lowest price currently on offer. Alex was very impressed with it and sat and listed 52 books for us. Within 4 days we have sold 17 already and most non-fiction books go for about 60% of the new price so it’s a bit more to the kitty.

It’s funny to think of our belongings be reused in this way, some have even gone to a much better life. Our tent is headed to Ullapool tomorrow, a beautiful town on the far north west of Scotland, ironically where we ourselves took it to catch the ferry to go camping in the Western Isles two years ago. In another strange twist, our Build Your Own House book has gone to a guy living on the island of Rousay in the Orkney Isles of Scotland - a place we once looked at buying a building plot. Finally, we have also inadvertently in this auction sold two lots to friends of ours, we didn’t realise until we went to send the invoice. Again, it’s nice to think of people getting further use out of them, however, I also wonder whether theirs like ours is full of good intentions, but ultimately spend more time in the garage than in use. One thing for certain, I don’t feel any regret at decluttering our lives a little more. Listing everything out certainly makes you realise how many things you waste your money on for a few moments of enjoyment. I’m certainly looking forward to owning only as much will fit in our boat!

So, we are gradually clearing a bit of space, we didn’t manage to do everything we planned this week, but we are a step closer.