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!