May 29 2008
The Lupus Foundation: friend to eBay sellers (or spring cleaners) everywhere!
I have reached that point in the year where I have had it as an eBay seller.
I have sold through most of my good stuff in the prime retail season of the winter and am just listing the last of the good stuff in the next week or so.
That leaves a few other high ticket items that I am saving for September-December, but, overall, my eBay sales are going to be much less over the summer. Lots of buy it nows and not so much with the auctions since the bidders will be in their swimming pools and not on eBay.
So now is the time of year when I look through my stock with cold scrutiny. I look at the items that I have listed several times now and which still haven’t sold. I look at the store inventory items that have been festering for months without so much as a nibble. I look at the items that Trading Assistant clients have told me that they do not want back, but did not sell. I look at all of this stuff and wonder what, pray tell, am I going to do with all this stuff?
In the old days, I used to just throw it all into one box and sell it as a mystery lot. But eBay just did away with mystery lots and this year I was at a loss with what to do with all this stuff.
Enter the Lupus foundation. They are looking for donations of just about everything on earth (see complete list) AND they will come to your house come and pick it up. Just leave it outside the door and when you come home, the stuff is gone and you have a receipt for tax purposes. (You can schedule a pick-up here) They will even take some furniture AND are especially looking for knickknacks, clothes, toys, old computer parts, appliances and other items that are the staple of the average eBay seller. You won’t believe all the stuff they are looking for!
There is a local church that takes clothing and stuffed animal donations and last fall I gave them 10 bags full of my clothes I don’t fit into anymore. But a lot of the stuff I sell on eBay didn’t fall into the list of what they accept and so I didn’t know what to do with it. You know the stuff I mean. It’s perfectly good stuff, just not the sort of stuff people purchase on eBay.
Now, even if you are not an eBay seller, just about everyone does their spring cleaning around this time of the year. Just about everyone has those boxes of stuff that they haven’t touched since they moved, those things that are still perfectly good but you just don’t like them anymore, those skinny clothes that you don’t want to admit that you will never fit into again, that set of dishes you don’t want anymore. Having tore through my house and eBay stuff this week to see what I can donate, let me tell you that it is very freeing to not only get rid of old stuff, but know that you are doing some good with it.
I personally (I suspect it is the eBay connection) have a lot of trouble getting rid of things that are still perfectly good. Trash or broken stuff, that I throw out with no qualms. But if the item is something that, while I don’t particularly want it, someone could use or if it is still like new, I cannot make myself throw it out. I need to know that someone is getting use out of it. I love the idea that the stuff I no longer want and couldn’t sell on eBay can be doing some good!
The Lupus foundation is a spring cleaning dream for anyone. But for myself, as an eBay seller, it is so very freeing. Suddenly that huge list of “Ugh, I still have to sell that” has been whittled down to only the stuff that will sell for a lot and all the other items can go and do some good elsewhere. It’s win-win. I get to start the holiday retail season with much more empty space in my stock room and the Lupus foundations gets a huge donation of items from me that they can sell and use to help save lives.
Their website has been a little overloaded this week but, even if you only have a single box or bag of stuff, please consider scheduling a pick-up.
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