I’m not dying. Not that I know of anyway. Not yet.
Just shoveling out my closets, my garage, my dresser drawers, and all the other nooks and crannies in my home that harbor useless, sentimental, or unnecessary crap, so those I leave behind won’t have to do it when I’m gone (and also to raise a little cash). Seriously, if I haven’t reread my college essays in 45 years, who else is going to read them? Unless I somehow become a best-selling, prize winning author before I “join the choir invisible,” in which case I guess those essays would become part of my “papers” to be donated to some willing institution of higher education. HA! Like that’s gonna happen.
First effort, a Labor Day garage sale. Didn’t go so well (except that a friend stopped by to keep me company as I sat waiting in my driveway – that was very kind of her!) After accounting for the cost of the signs I put at either end of my street, I made a stunning profit of $1.95.
But garage sales aren’t the only way to get rid of stuff. Several years ago I went through all my old vinyl records and sold a lot of them to Half Price Books. They gave me over $100 dollars for them! I guess Millennials, Xers, and Zoomers are that into vinyl. The collection included a lot of 70s and ’80s era stuff, from America to Pure Prairie League to Loggins and Messina to Jackson Browne, Carole King, James Taylor, and the Eagles. You get the idea. Among those records was my Joni Mitchell Blue album, with a cover that showed how often I had pulled it out from my shelves and played it. I didn’t realize until after it was gone that I had sold it during its 50th anniversary year. I probably could have gotten more for it, but the grooves of that record were worn deep, so maybe not.
Nevertheless, with dollar signs in my eyes, I set off to Half Price Books with four banker’s boxes containing a variety of contemporary fiction and non-fiction, including several books by Elizabeth Strout, a copy of Educated, a best-selling memoir of a young woman’s escape to college from a Mormon survivalist family, and a book with the full script of Hamilton with commentary by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Plus a couple of board games and a few vintage children’s movies on VHS.
After about half an hour, they called my name and I zipped up to the counter, where they gave me a staggering offer of $14.95. For all of it.
By my reckoning, that puts it at less than a quarter per item. The reasoning, apparently, was that Hamilton is old news, and they get an awful lot of Elizabeth Strout, copies of Educated, and other books in the bunch, like Malcom Gladwell (Tipping Point, Outliers, Blink). And who even has a VCR anymore?
So if you’re going to go ahead and buy, rather than borrow (yay, libraries!) a hot new book, sell it immediately after you’ve read it (unless, like me, you’re a book hoarder and getting rid of books is genuinely painful). If you wait until you’re truly ready to part with your book baby, you can expect no better than pennies on the dollar.
But I’m not out of options yet: eBay! I got $31 for this guy:
You remember this guy. I know you do. Mid-century kitsch! All the rage. Heartened by the success of that sale, I’ve now posted several other items, and I figured out that people who look for stuff on eBay don’t really want to “buy it now.” They seem to prefer auctions. The thrill of the chase, and winning at the last minute, I guess.
I posted a vintage Zenith all-in-one stereo system that has a turntable, cassette player, and an AM/FM tuner (but no CD player, of course – the thing is from the ’70s). I posted the old clock radio (also with a cassette player) that I have had on every bedside table since college. I still glance over to the empty space on my current bedside table to check the time each night when I’m watching TV in my boudoir.
Every time I notice that empty space, I smile, because I’m starting to feel the unburdening effect of getting rid of stuff. It feels good. It’s a relief. The extra space on that small bedside table somehow makes it easier to breathe. Plus, my phone has stopped falling off the table due to a lack of room. Bonus!
Next? The Flexible Flyer sled (pictured above) and the vintage Schwinn bike with flat tires and badly installed (by me) wobbly training wheels that still has faded 35 year-old crepe paper coiled around its frame from the last time my now 40-something niece rode it in our local Fourth of July parade.
Next round? More stuff from high school and college still stowed in boxes in my bedroom closets. Might take all winter or longer to deal with all that. I’ll keep you posted.
Until then, I remain,
your unburdening, shoveling-out, un-sentimentally-chucking-out-stuff-no-one-in-my-family-would-ever-want-after-I’m-gone,
Ridiculouswoman
The rewards of letting go are wonderful but selling off to a good home is also a way of passing along what once held your rapt attention. Letting go, and letting go and more letting go…you get stars for this.