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First Person

Need Cash? Try Craigslist, Amazon & Co.

Posted January 30, 2009

Meet Charlie Fish. He’s an incredibly talented young journalist who just happened to find himself on the wrong side of one of those all-too-predictable, practically interchangeable media layoffs. You’ll like him. During his spare moments, he’ll be joining us, upon occasion, here at EconoWhiner Central as an Apprentice Whiner (or, as some call it, an intern).

His article, “I Know Why the Packrat Hoards,” is a must-read look at some ways to get by in our new, new economy. Whine on, Charlie!

By Charlie Fish

 

Last year, Oprah had a special episode dedicated to clutter. It featured a couple whose home was littered and inundated with it: Boxes of decades-old paperwork, outgrown clothes and piles of (for lack of a better word) junk, which covered their living spaces like mold on bad bread.

Undoubtedly, Oprah isn’t the only self-help maven preaching clutter-removal to Americans. But she is the most influential. At any other time in recent history, I would’ve listened to her. Except, having been recently laid off, I’m beginning to see why packrats hold on to useless material items.

Tell me you can look at a pile of your old books and not have a flood of memories wash over you and I’ll tell you you’re a heartless stoic.

I treat novels like they were textbooks. I underline. I scribble notes. I imbue my paperbacks with whatever mental state I’m in, or whatever milieu envelops me at the time.

I can pick up a book and instantly be transported to the very day I first read it, even if it was more than ten years ago. My clothes are an equally effective time-travel device, teleporting me to a time when I was skinny because of my youth, not because of my financial circumstance. And, lest we forget, if there’s an inanimate object worth keeping around for memories’ sake, it’s furniture pieces: a mattress, a love seat, a bookshelf, a console.

But being unemployed in today’s economy means sometimes you have to part with your material things to be able to pay your electricity bill, because unemployment checks only cover so much and severance pay isn’t unlimited.

Turns out packrats may have been right all along. What if the act of hoarding wasn’t purely for nostalgia’s sake or borne out of laziness, but rather was an innate, prescient warning of barren, stagnant times? In other words, packrats have been preparing for times like these, when excess and surplus are in peril of becoming extinct.

My partner and I had a coffee table he brought over when he moved from Costa Rica. To hear him describe it, you’d think it would fetch a pretty penny.

“It’s made from Guanacaste wood, a fine, reddish-brown, rare type of wood you can only find in Costa Rica,” we wrote on the craigslist ad to sell it. It was a painful choice for him, as his most jarring memory associated with the coffee table was seeing his father suffer a grand mal seizure beside it. I thought that reason alone would push him to sell the piece; instead, his memory of living in Costa Rica, and of seeing his father in convulsions, only made him want to hold on to it for longer. A few days later, we took the listing down.

To make a little extra cash, we’ve sold a headboard for $50 and a few articles of clothing for a collective $120. Our “junk” isn’t selling for a lot on craigslist, but every penny does seem to fall into its much-needed place.

Recently, without wanting to do it, I’ve put my books up for sale on Amazon. “OK condition, with a few scribbles throughout,” I described my copy of The Alchemist. It never sold-as I doubt anyone would want a book filled with another’s jottings-so I happily took it off the site and placed it back on the bookshelf where it belongs. I’ve since been selling my newer books, the books I bought but hadn’t had the chance to read yet: Amerika, Children of Men, The Life of Pi.

We’re not in dire straits just yet. I’ve only been unemployed for two months, and I’m young enough (27) that I still have the stamina to recover from mistakes.

But I wonder about the rest of the unemployed packrats, who’ve been suffering for much longer. I know an unemployed mother in North Carolina who has sold her car, her dining room table, her fine china, and the mattress in her guest room. She keeps this a secret (as best she can) from her adult children, whom she doesn’t want to worry. She sells these items quickly and furtively, and has stopped having guests over because there’s nowhere to sit them. Besides, she couldn’t tolerate being asked about the empty, unfurnished rooms in her house.

Not that she is a packrat, as her home is kept tidy and neat. But her example serves to illustrate how hard it must be to systematically reduce those material things that’ve been either passed down from prior generations or accumulated over the years: material things that make your house a warm home.

To date, the books I’ve sold have only gotten me a paltry $30. I spent more buying them than what they sold for. It’s a loss, but a loss I’m willing to take to ensure I pay off some of my credit card debt, or my medical bills, or the luxury of cable TV, or dog food for my 3-year old Boston Terrier, or my portion of the weekly groceries, or whatever else deserves attention from my wallet.

My only hope is that the economy evens out instead of continuing its nosedive downward before I’m forced to sell something of higher emotional as well as practical value, like the desk I sit at and write, or the very computer I write in (a Mac, for future reference), or the bed I share with my partner and our dog.

Parting with those material things would leave me broken. Because then I’d know we’re no longer in a recession, but rather a depression.

The Whiner wants to know: If you’ve needed to raise cash recently, how have you done it? Any internet techniques worth sharing?


Reader Comments

  1. chris

    Nine years ago we had a major home robbery. With that event, things took a new place in my life; they are just “things.” Things can be replaced and things don’t have much value – sentimental or otherwise. I do it all – craigslist, ebay, amazon and what doesn’t march goes to goodwill. My philosophy is that I would rather have something for it – even if the amount is very small – than to have it sitting around rathering dust.

    If you look at what hoarders keep, it is junk. It is useless stuff. Compulsive shoppers on the other hand, have a lot of things that have value, as most of what they have, has been purchased and often is new in the package. Hoarders have scraps and bits and much broken down items ready for the bin.

    Just remember what is really important – your health, your loved ones, and in my case, my photographs. All the other stuff can be replaced. (And seriously, look how often we replace our stuff – or upgrade it.)

  2. abo gato

    I’ve kind of been wondering when, and what it will take, for the bottom to fall out of ebay and craigslist and other sales outlets. Will we truly reach the point where no one will be able to buy something even if it is second hand? If there are a lot of people who make supplemental money from that source and that dries up too, where will we be?

    I seem kind of glum today. Maybe tired. Or,maybe it’s because I did just donate blood and that has made me want to lie down for a bit.

  3. Karenza

    A local jewelry store has a newspaper ad running now encouraging readers to bring in their sterling silver, etc. their buying. I have only a few sterling items and none have much sentimental value, so I will be selling them. We have to put a $2,000 deposit down at our children’s school for next year by February 26, so it’s all I can do to think of how we’re going to come up with it! Every little bit helps.

  4. amy

    Mm. Should be noted that there’s a serious difference between hanging onto stuff because you think you may be poor again & pathological hoarding. The pathological hoarding has nothing to do with foresight, fear of poverty, etc.

    Unless you’re desperate, I’d hang onto stuff just now. I’ve long since stopped selling the kid’s Hanna Andersson stuff online; I had an ebay carousel going there for a while. Sell the old nice clothes, buy new nice clothes. Hanna took the floor out of that market a while ago, though; their prices for new are now what I used to get for used. I’d rather hang onto nice, durable kids’ clothes, & have them available as gifts and/or wait to sell until things improve.

  5. Laura

    Loved your post, Charlie Fish.

    I have never either bought or sold online, but I frequent garage and yard sales and thrift stores. This is nothing new for me, though, it’s a lifelong habit. I’ve laways been offended by the prices for new.

    I’ve also had my own yard sales from time to time. It’s quite amazing what you can bring in, and there’s the added pleasure of sitting outside, chatting with your neighbors and other passersby.

    I financed a move to Guatemala once via a yard sale where hubby and I basically sold everything we owned but for a few choice items that we stored in a friend attic. Hubby had a job offer there and we didn’t have much in savings, so it helped tremendously. We drove our truck deep into the woods on a friend’s property and covered it with a green tarp. It made a nice home for some critters until we returned.

    Never did sell my books, though, other than the ones I bought in some sort of fever and realized later they were a mistake. I just can’t part with those. I have weaned myself from bookstores now, though, and rely on the library for books to read.

  6. Hope

    Oh, Charlie, I hope my hubby doesn’t happen upon this post. He and I go rounds seasonally re: things he won’t part with that fill Rubbermaid containers in the attic and boxes in the basement. Nothing we could likely sell online, though. Bummer. At least he’s not collecting old stacks of newspaper and junk mail like a true hoarder.

    I sell books online, but only when they’re relatively new and I know I’ll never read them again…mostly things I read and think, “not that good.” You don’t get a lot for them, but you can buy a new book with a few sold. And anything with 378 used copies starting at 1 cent on amazon is a library donation waiting to happen.

    Generally, I find that the tax deduction from donating things is worth more than I can get selling them….

  7. Crayon

    Up until now I’ve donated,like Hope mentioned, old clothes and books and white elephant gifts and taken the tax deduction.

    My concern is like AG that the bottom is going to fall out on reselling for cash. Ebay’s revenue fell by a third last quarter. Used bookstores in my area are reporting an increase of hopefuls coming in with boxes of books to sell only to leave disappointed. Something unique or of higher value such as vehicles, decent furniture, appliances,(like we all have good appliances laying around ha ha), music instruments, and jewelry still might bring some cash. But I wouldn’t wait if that’s a fall back plan for you. I hate to keep sounding like Chicken Little.

    I haven’t gotten the hang of selling for cash, a reaction to my mom who did it all the time. She had a route of consignment shops that she kept tabs on and we always stopped at the railroad salvage store for dented cans of food or other deals. She read the green stamp catalog to us at the beginning of summer for redemption ideas to vote on, usually a croquet or badminton set won out.

    My cheap thrill is to rummage at resale shops for vinyl classical music albums. I still have a stereo and speakers rigged up, I like the snaps and pops and warmer sound quality.

    Hoarding trash and piles of junk where you can’t walk through your living space is an illness and one of my relatives has it, so it’s no laughing matter. They think every scrap or item has profound meaning so they can’t part with anything. I’ve seen cars driving around filled to the gunnels with bags of stuff as well.

    Before recycling became what it is today, our school would have paper drives. We’d take our little wagons around the neighborhood and collect old newspapers from garages and basements. I was cured at an early age of even thinking of being a hoarder after seeing some of those basements. We would pull our wagon loads to the school parking lot and fill up a huge moving van with old newspapers for a worthy cause.

    Wasn’t there a thread here about saving change as well? Every once in awhile I get out my wrappers (the bank will give them to you if you ask) and the plastic coin measuring device and make money rolls, then lug them to the bank. HH gets annoyed because I like to give exact change when I buy something with cash, he thinks I take too much time in line fishing through my coin purse…….”wait, I know I have two pennies in here somewhere….”.

  8. Andrew

    @abo gato: “I’ve kind of been wondering when, and what it will take, for the bottom to fall out of ebay and craigslist and other sales outlets.”

    As long as most people have computers, Craigslist will always make secondhand buying/selling/swapping cheaper. Even with national scarcity, poverty or hyperinflation, the system is flexible enough to adjust. …as long as we still have computers. After that it’s back to market squares or telephone-pole ads.

  9. George

    My wife and I decided about a year and half ago to “de-clutter” our home after we had managed to fill up just about every room and closet with junk – not to mention the garage which was stacked, floor-to-ceiling, with more junk in rubbermaid boxes.

    We trashed or donated anything that we felt was not worth trying to sell. Then we started selling using garage sales, eBay, Amazon, Craigs’ List, etc. In the past year and half we’ve managed to bring order back to our home by eliminating all the clutter and it was great for our overall daily feeling of “peace” as we moved about in the house. We’ve also managed to earn about $5,000 in the process, which is a nice chunk of change for stuff that was simply depreciating in value in dark and dusty corners of our humble abode.

    As of January 2009 we are still working on emptying out the garage and will probably be at this for another couple of years.

    Make no mistake – it’s a lot of work and it’s very time consuming to re-sell your possessions. But we do it as sort of a hobby now, figuring that we’re doing ourselves multiple favors by eliminating clutter and reducing our debts with the proceeds of our sales. Besides – its a better way to spend one’s free time than watching endless re-runs of crap-TV on cable.

    Why are we doing this? Well, both of us are in our 40’s now, and we’ve simply reached a stage in our lives where we realize that our quality of life depends more on making worthwhile expenditures of our time than it does on the never-ending process of accumulating possesions – most of which we’ve learned we didn’t really need. Our possessions simply weighed us down with debt and the misery of storing the stuff – looking for the stuff – moving the stuff around – maintaining the stuff – insuring the stuff, etc., etc.

    Our immediate goal is to downsize and simplify our lives. We’d like to move to a small town in a rural community out West, (maybe in the Rockies), where we would live in a home of less than 1500 s.f. in size with only the necessities of life stored inside.

    Selling off our unused and unneeded “stuff” has been, and continues to be, one of the most liberating experiences of our lives. We absolutely love taking all this crap to the post office and dropping it down the chute – waving fond farewell to it all as it travels to some other poor fellow’s closets and rubbermaid boxes.

    When we are done, we intend to have no more possessions than can be loaded into our two Toyota 4Runners. That way, if we want to relocate, we can do so at the drop of a hat and do not have to waste a bunch of money on moving vans, trailers, storage, etc. in the process.

    It is now our opinion that most Americans own WAY TOO MUCH STUFF and most would be FAR HAPPIER if they would sell or give away 90+% of what they own. I think this is trend that will only gain more and more steam in the coming months as people are forced to part with the momentoes of their formerly over-consuming lives.

  10. Arlene

    Great post!

    I am a kind of anticlutter zealot in my own house. Weirdly, I am coming to think my war on junk has also been a kind of early warning of tough times to come, even though it might appear to be the bulimic opposite of the hoarders’ impulse.

    Having an orderly space feels much more critical to clear thinking and setting priorities for me than it used to even a decade ago. In reality, it feels like I (like everyone else, actually) only have the emotional and practical bandwidth to care for a limited number of “things” and it feels like we’ll all have even less in the future…of energy, safety, and attention. So things I am responsible for need to be the right ones–important, useful, or beautiful–not those tragic heaps of random junk we see on the clutter-purging shows.

    I haven’t “made” any money doing this, except:

    1) I can live in a smaller house or apartment and thus have more choices in where I can locate while staying within a budget.

    2) I spend far less time on housework, week in and week out, than I would if I was dusting the entire 400-character Disney figurine collection (as if!).

    3) I never have to buy things twice because I’ve “lost” the hammer, scotch tape, screwdriver, etc, inside a crammed junk drawer or stuffed closet.

    4) I have no credit card debt because I shop only for things I really, really want or need.

    So I’ve “made” (probably) a small fortune, although I was doing all these things before the economy collapsed anyway.

    Early in the 00s, I had to clean out my parents’ house after their unexpected, sudden, and near-simultaneous deaths. They weren’t hoarders, fortunately, but they were demon shoppers with great taste. They did love their antiques, clothing bargains, costume jewelry, Christmas decorations, and china–and LOTS of it.

    I kept just enough to honor them and to use in my everyday life but guess where the rest ended up? The estate auction, followed by a dumpster.

    It cured me, and maybe just in time.

  11. Jan from NJ

    Anybody got any tips for one who is a de-clutterer and would love to raise some cash, but who lives with a packrat who can rarely be persuaded to part with anything?

  12. amy

    Yes. Wait until they leave. Then inflict the trauma. There’ll be consequences, yes, but consequences in a clutter-free home.

  13. Hope

    Jan…my hubby is a bit of a packrat. Does your partner travel? I find packing a bag for Goodwill while my hubby is on the road often goes unnoticed. A real packrat might have a better inventory in his head, but my hubby has rarely noticed the things I’ve donated…onesy, twosey. It makes me laugh when I think of it now…I know I could give away bags of things if I had the time and energy. But of course, you have to know exactly what will and won’t be noticed. Occasionally he will notice something missing, but he’s quite good natured about it. Overall, in the midst of large piles of ’stuff’, a few here and there are rarely missed. :)

  14. Charlie

    Amy,

    My partner has gotten rid of some of my stuff while I was away. Afterwards, I was relieved that it was done (and that I didn’t have to do any lifting and/or dragging of the stuff myself). :)

  15. Fenbeast

    I am inspired. I’m going to set aside a weekend this month to sort through our mountain of junk, photograph it, and post it for sale. I have a huge ROOM full of items that we never got around to unpacking and locating when we moved to our house 3 years ago–clearly, I can live without it. So out it goes, and we’ll convert the storage room into a playroom for our kids.