12 Steps to Craigslist Cash

Through the years, Craigslist has been my friend. It's an easy, cheap, relatively hassle-free way to rid my house of clutter.

Now that I'm working through 40 bags in 40 days, I'm finding one or two Craigslist-appropriate items each day to post. I have a pretty good success rate, and I'm enjoying a little extra cash in my wallet and knowing that my unused items are going to someone who can use them.

Here are my 12 steps to Craigslist cash:

1. Clean your items up. Make sure you have all the parts. Only post new, like new, or in good condition items. 
2. Take good pictures. Use the best light you have available to you, and take multiple shots from different angles. If it's a name brand item, take a picture of the tag.
3. Write a clear description of what you are selling. People often search using keywords, and you want to increase your chances of your listings popping up in their search. Check your spelling. 
4. Google your item and add product links to your posting whenever possible. You can also use the stock photo as an additional photo in your listing if it captures the item better than your photo did.
5. Post multiple items at one time. Add a unique search term (i.e. your initials or a one-of-a-kind keyword) to each of your postings. Do a practice search to make sure it only pulls up your listings. This helps people to see more of your postings and might inspire them to buy multiple items at once.
6. Add keywords like "NEW with tags", "from a clean, smoke-free, pet-free home", or "well-cared" for when applicable.
7. Be up front in your posting about why you are getting rid of an item. That's often one of the first questions people will ask.
8. Be realistic with your pricing. Price it to sell, and price it for what it's worth, not what you paid for it (ask yourself, "How much would I pay for this?")
9. Only post larger items ($10+ is a good rule of thumb) otherwise it's a waste of your time. For smaller items, save them for a garage sale or just donate and take the tax deduction.
10. Post/renew your postings on the weekends. People tend to be more active on Craigslist on Saturday's and Sunday's. Take advantage of the fact the Craigslist now allows you to renew your items periodically, which moves them to the top of the list (but don't do this too often or you will annoy people).
11. Pre-screen your emails before handing out your address. If something seems fishy to you, wait until you are confident that this is a legitimate buyer before handing out personal information. Sometimes I even google the person's name or email address before proceeding.
12. Be willing to take lower offers - in my experience the first offer you get is often times the best one.

Good luck turning your clutter into cash!

clean sweep

I have been in an organizing/de-cluttering sort of mood the past few days. Kind of like nesting only without the pregnancy (it is a relief to me that this phenomenon still happens even when you're not expecting - during my last, LAST nesting period a little over a year ago I wondered how I would ever get anything done again). Our friends just moved, my mom's been working on her house, and I've been reading about it over here...a perfect storm, I guess you could say.

My main focus has been the unfinished basement. We are not pack-rats, but things were getting bad down there. Can't-walk-through-the-room, sign-us-up-for-Hoarders bad. I wish I had taken a Before picture but just trust me when I say it wasn't good.

My strategy:

• Clear out all the little boy clothes to a couple of adorable little guys in my life. It can be a little emotional sorting through the baby Dilly clothes but I pushed through. I have one tiny bin of toddler stuff left but I am pretty much cleared out.
• Organize my garage sale pile. I'm not generally a garage sale type gal, but I had one here last spring with some friends and we had a lot of fun people-watching, negotiating, and eating, so I'm game for doing another one this year. Plus I made almost $400 and got rid of a bunch of stuff I have yet to miss.
• Craigslist, Craigslist, Craigslist. I love Craigslist. With minimal effort this week I have cleared out several medium-ish items that were just taking up space. Some people may find the whole thing creepy but I have met several quite nice people through the years. For example, this week I sold our baby swing to a couple with 6 and 8 year old boys who are expecting their first baby girl soon, and I met a nice young girl who works days doing environmental work (cleaning up the Kalamazoo oil spill right now) who was happy to take three bar stools and a spice rack off my hands.
• Donate to people who might actually need it. We have a Love INC drop-off site nearby - I brought a load of stuff over there (including our old computer and printer that was taking up a lot of space) and brought a couple bags of clothes (for the Have It/Need It? room) and some good-condition nursery toys to our church (side note: I went through my pantry last week and loaded up a bag of stuff I just won't get to using in time to send with Dylan to school for a food-drive - if you think about it for a minute, you can usually find the right place for your still-in-good-shape stuff).
• Sort out the luggage closet. We have more luggage than one family has any right to. My parents love to give us luggage for gifts - the kids will each receive six pieces during the early years of their lives, four duffle bags in various sizes plus two rolling duffles, all in matching colors, complete with their intials (gotta love my mom for that!). The beauty of this gift is that if you give kids luggage, it implies that you expect them to go places, and how cool is that? The downside is a very disorganized pile of bags in the basement. Anyway, everything is now contained. Viola.
• Say good-bye to ugly gift wrap. I'm somewhat of a gift-wrap-aholic. This week I sorted through it all, tossed the beat-up, unattractive stuff, and separated the Christmas from the every day stuff.
• Label!! So...I recently acquired a label maker. I realize this makes me a dork. I don't care. It's magic.

The After:

fun with craigslist

We just sold our fourth item on craigslist last night (we also sold a mirror and our old fridge and stove a few weeks ago). This really nice young couple came last night to look at our old TV (Matt just upgraded to a plasma) and they decided they wanted it. The problem is that this TV weighs about 300 lbs. - that might a be slight exageration but not by much - and Matt wasn't home so it was up to me and this nice couple to get it into the back of their Envoy.

So we've got an insanely heavy TV, two small children underfoot, only one grown man, and about 20 feet to move this TV. We got it out of the dining room and around the corner and then realized the back of their car wasn't open yet. She went to open it and out LEAPED two huge dogs. Like leaped the way you see dogs leap in movies. They came flying over the back seat and into our house which, incidentally, is very good for running around in circles because all of the rooms connect, so run in circles they did.

So now we have an insanely heavy TV partially resting on a bench and partially resting on the grown man, two huge dogs running in circles around my house followed by the girl chasing them, plus now my children are crying because they're somewhat frightened by large dogs, especially the kind that leap into your house with no warning.

Eventually, we got the dogs in the car, the TV in the car, and only did minor damage to our walls, which Matt fixed up after work with a little spackle and touch up paint. We were all laughing hysterically pretty much the entire time too because it was all just that ridiculous and funny. They really were a nice couple though, and I feel like we could be friends if we met under different circumstances...maybe I'll email them back and see how the new TV's working out for them and invite them (minus the dogs) over for dinner :).

The End.