Apparently I'm in the Health & Fitness Business Now

 

C.R.A.P. Log: July 30, 2026

This morning I sold a cassette audiobook for $7.75.

The title -

Stay Fit & Healthy Until You're Dead by Dave Barry.

Apparently, I am now in the health and fitness business.

Actually, that's one of the things I enjoy most about my Conservation Reuse and Purpose (C.R.A.P.) project. One day I'm selling a bird book. The next day it's an old coffee mug. Then a Lionel train video. Today...a health and fitness cassette.

Somewhere out there is a person who either still owns a cassette player or simply wanted this bit of Dave Barry humor enough to add it to their collection. Either way, something that had been sitting on a shelf now has another chance to be enjoyed.

To me, that's stewardship.

Most of us have closets, attics, basements, garages, and storage units filled with perfectly usable things. We paid good money for them, and many still have value to someone else. Yet every year countless useful items are thrown away simply because they're no longer useful to us.

Every item that finds a new home is one less item headed toward a landfill, one less replacement that has to be manufactured, and one more reminder that conservation isn't always about protecting forests or wildlife.

Sometimes conservation looks like cleaning out your basement.

So today's official C.R.A.P. report is:

• Item: Stay Fit & Healthy Until You're Dead (cassette audiobook)
• Sold for: $7.75
• Environmental impact: One more item rescued. One less piece of C.R.A.P. in my basement.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to see what other career I'll be in tomorrow. At this rate I could wake up in the antiques business, the cookbook business, or perhaps become a world-famous dealer in slightly used coffee mugs.

That's the wonderful thing about C.R.A.P.

You never know what tomorrow will bring. 😄

The C.R.A.P. I Sold This Week: Fishing for New Owners

 

This week, I sold three pieces of C.R.A.P.

Two books and a Green Lantern coffee mug.

Not exactly enough activity to send Wall Street into a frenzy. But that's not really the point.

For me, selling C.R.A.P. isn't primarily about building an online resale empire or seeing how much money I can make. It's part of a much bigger project: gradually decluttering my life, using the things I already own more wisely, and having a little fun along the way.

It's part of living The Stewardship Way.

I have accumulated a lot of stuff over the years. I suspect most of us have. Some of it we use. Some of it has sentimental value. Some of it may be worth keeping for reasons known only to us.

And then there's the C.R.A.P.

The Collectible, Reusable And Profitable stuff that I no longer need or want but that someone else might.

That's where the fun begins.

I have started thinking of the process as mining for C.R.A.P.

I can walk into my basement, open a cabinet, look through a box, or examine a shelf and wonder:

"Is there anything here that I don't need anymore that someone else might enjoy?"

Every once in a while, I find something.

Maybe it's an old book. Maybe it's a coffee mug. Maybe it's something I haven't thought about in 20 years.

I clean it up if necessary, take a few pictures, write a description, put a price on it, and list it for sale.

Then I wait.

I've discovered that listing something online feels a little like fishing.

Every time I create a listing, it's as though I'm tossing another bait into a very, very large lake.

Somewhere out there might be a person looking for exactly what I have.

Maybe someone is researching Welsh settlers in North America. Maybe someone is interested in how cities approach sustainability. Or maybe there's a Green Lantern fan who sees that mug and thinks, "I've got to have that!"

You never know.

And that's what makes it fun.

I don't have to sell 100 things a week for this to be worthwhile. I'm not measuring success by how many packages I carry to the post office.

I'm playing the long game.

Three things left my house this week.

That's three fewer things taking up space. Three things that avoided being thrown away. Three things that found new owners who presumably wanted them more than I did.

And I made a little money in the process.

That's a pretty good deal.

The more I do this, the more I realize that decluttering doesn't necessarily have to be a dreaded weekend project where you drag everything out of the basement and spend two exhausting days deciding what stays and what goes.

It can happen gradually.

One shelf.

One box.

One drawer.

One piece of C.R.A.P. at a time.

For me, that's where this connects with The Stewardship Way. Stewardship isn't always about grand projects or saving the world. Sometimes it's simply about paying attention to what we already have and asking whether we're using our resources wisely.

And sometimes good stewardship can actually be fun.

So I'll keep mining my basement for C.R.A.P.

I'll keep tossing a little bait into that enormous online lake.

And every once in a while, someone out there will bite.

Then I'll put another piece of C.R.A.P. in a box, send it on its way to a new home, and enjoy having one less thing in mine.

Until next week's C.R.A.P. report...happy mining!

CRAP I Sold — Week of July 6, 2026

 

One of the things I've noticed since starting my C.R.A.P. (Conserved Resources Awaiting Purpose) project is that value often isn't created by buying something new. Sometimes it's created by simply finding a new purpose for something that's been sitting on a shelf.

Last week, five very different items left my house for new homes.

• A Callaway golf club head cover.
• A copy of Anatomy of an Island: A Geological History of Oahu.
• A Lionel Ready-to-Run Train Set VHS instruction tape.
• A brand-new, still-sealed pair of Philips iPod earbuds.
• A lot of seven environmental and ecology books.

At first glance, they don't appear to have much in common.

A golfer wanted the head cover.

Someone interested in Hawaii wanted the geology book.

A Lionel train enthusiast needed the VHS tape.

An iPod collector—or perhaps someone still using an older iPod—wanted the unopened earbuds.

And someone else now owns seven books that shaped much of my own thinking about ecology, biodiversity, restoration, and the relationship between people and nature.

What they all had in common was this:

I had absolutely nothing invested in any of them.

Most came from donations, leftovers from past projects, or things that had simply accumulated over decades. They had already served whatever purpose they once had for me.

Instead of ending up in a landfill, each one is now beginning another chapter in someone else's story.

That's really what C.R.A.P. is about.

It's not clutter.

It's not junk.

It's simply Conserved Resources Awaiting Purpose.

Sometimes that purpose is to teach.

Sometimes it's to collect.

Sometimes it's to restore a favorite hobby.

Sometimes it's simply to make someone smile.

Every item that finds a new home reduces waste, generates a little income, and reminds me that stewardship isn't always about protecting wilderness. Sometimes stewardship begins by looking around your own home and asking a simple question:

"Who could use this more than I do?"

This week's collection of "CRAP" answered that question five different ways.

See all of my C.R.A.P. HERE