Spring Cleaning is Stupid and the Story of the $212 Yard Sale

As I write this post, it’s spring time.

People are busy with ‘spring cleaning’ or as I call it, getting rid of all of the junk they have accumulated over the years.

If you haven’t noticed by now, I’m not a big supporter of excess things. In fact, I’ve often written about the massive opportunity cost of your stuff. Stuff doesn’t just cost the money you spend to buy it. It also costs you all of the space it takes up, all of the cost to maintain it, and ends up justifying needs to start ‘collections’ just to name a few things.

The story I’m about to tell you is a perfect example of this point.

The Story of the $212 Yard Sale

I was recently having a conversation with a friend where he and I were talking about this exact subject, the epidemic that plagues the world of too much stuff.

He admitted he was guilty himself of this disease, and thankfully he was taking corrective action to attempt to rid himself of all of the useless things he had acquired. That was a plus at least.

As I asked him how he planned on getting rid of all of these things, he said, “well I already had a yard sale.”

(For those who don’t know, that’s Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You to Be Rich. This is a popular phrase with Ramit when he hears something incredibly ridiculous.)

Needless to say, this was incredibly ridiculous.

Why?

Because the nature of yard sales is an environment that is set up for low ball offers, and a ridiculous amount of time and effort to pull off. Additionally, you usually end up with 2/3 of your stuff left over after hundreds of people have picked through it. It’s a terrible use of finite resources.

What’s the best you’re going to do with a yard sale? A few hundred bucks? Usually people are selling things for a few dollars each. It honestly doesn’t add up to much at the end of the day. And you’ve spent all that time setting up, haggling, breaking things down, and then carting the junk you have left over back into your overstuffed garage.

My friend made $212 bucks at his yard sale, but he was still left with all kinds of stuff that was taking up space and not really worth that much.

While $212 for a days’ work might not sound like a bad take, you also have to keep in mind that he spent half a day setting up for this yard sale, and another day to during it, and still had half of his stuff leftover. The only things he got rid of were higher ticket items like appliances, computers, some home electronics, etc – much of which he accepted near rock bottom prices for.

While it might seem like I’m rapping on the dude, I’m really not. I commend him for trying, but I’d like to offer a better solution than a yard sale to get rid of stuff. Maybe it’ll help you too.

That’s what Academy Success is all about after all – finding a better way.

Think Bigger About Your Time and Money

The mindset here is what really matters. If you want to be successful with your life, you have to think bigger than a couple hundred bucks. You have to have a more valuable mindset about not only your money, but your time as well. This was a nearly two day endeavor for only $212, and only halfway successful.

Consider this as a more efficient solution.

If my friend had compiled all of the junk he wanted to get rid of, put the items that were valuable aside, and donated the rest to a good cause, he would have saved himself half a day of setup time for his yard sale, and would have gotten rid of all of the tiny items that weren’t worth his time to sell, and that ended up being left over anyway.

He then would have been able to sell off all of the valuable items to people that were not in the yard sale bargain hunting state of mind, and on his own time (not the time of other impatient bargain shoppers).

Craigslist and eBay can often bolster nice sums of money for in-demand items, can spur price competition with multiple concurrent offers, and are extremely easy and effective to use. In fact I recently made about $2000 on Craiglist and eBay myself, although this was mainly to upgrade larger ticket items. Nevertheless, it’s easy to do.

So suddenly that $212 turns into $500, and my friend saves nearly two days of time . Now he can do whatever he wants with that extra money, and extra time he now has in his life. And all of that time is pretty valuable if you ask me.

My buddy did a good thing by attempting to get rid of his stuff. He just didn’t think out of the box before he went and had a silly yard sale.

Oh well. Lesson learned. Maybe he won’t accumulate all of that stuff in the first place.

Your Challenge

Do you have extra stuff sitting around taking up your valuable space? You almost certainly do.

Odds are, some of this stuff is worth something, but it’s getting less and less valuable by the day.

Here’s your self-improvement challenge:

• Take a little bit of time and categorize it into “worth-selling” and “not worth selling” or “donating” (think $10 or more when making these classifications)
• Put all of the “not worth selling” stuff into a bag and take it to the nearest donation center. Just easily rid yourself of it. You’ll love the extra space.
• Now put all of the rest of the items on Craigslist and eBay. Larger items go on Craigslist. Smaller items go on eBay (due to shipping costs mainly)
• Repeat until you’ve cleared out the amount of space you want to clear
• Now do it again and be harder on yourself. You’ve likely kept things you don’t need.

Now here’s the most important part of this strategy. Ingrain this into your mindset.

If you don’t really need something, don’t buy it. Just because it’s on sale, a good value, or you might use it someday, doesn’t mean you need it. Only buy things you’re going to use frequently.

Having a few really nice things is much better than having a whole bunch of little things that end up having no value.

Otherwise, you’re going to end up having to have your own $212 yard sale.