Focusing on Simplicity - Donating Stuff Instead Of Selling It
We recently cleaned out the garage and had been putting this chore off for quite a while now. It had become too much of a problem to ignore any more so we decided that we needed to address the situation. Toys that had been outgrown, clothing that no longer fit, and a hodge podge of other various and sundry items had been relegated to the garage and stacked in a haphazard and unsafe manner. Part of the underlying problem had been our thinking that we would save stuff up to have a garage sale or that we would list items on Ebay. But neither one of those things happened and the stuff piled up. When we could no longer fit one vehicle in the garage, we knew that the time had come to take action.
Feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of cleaning out the entire garage, we decided to take a multi step approach. Each of us would spend 15 to 20 minutes per day cleaning, discarding, and organizing the garage which would include determining items that we should keep and those we needed to get rid of. We found ourselves still having trouble getting rid of items because we kept debating “should we sell this on Ebay or have a garage sale?” However, after talking about it further, we decided that our overall goal was to get the garage cleaned out and not increase income, so we decided together that anything worthwhile would be donated. Once we made this decision, the cleaning and organizing became a lot easier. I was able to let go of a lot of clutter and now the garage is all cleaned and we can actually fit a car in it! We bagged up all the items that we no longer wanted and made a call to Salvation Army.
After the last couple of garage sales we’ve had, we’ve hauled the stuff that didn’t sell to a shop to be donated. There’s only so much glassware and other Perfectly Good Stuff that you can store!
I just did the same thing. The stuff just piled up and I kept thinking I would ebay it but I dreaded the hassle of listing something, responding to questions, stressing over the final price, getting it in the mail, etc. What I concluded is that if I photograph and itemize the items so that I can come with a true FMV number to use for my taxes, then the tax deduction probably works out to what I would have made on ebay. Not exactly equal, since the tax deduction just reduces the amount of tax we pay, but good enough to choose the much simpler option of just donating.