There’s no question that I enjoy buying and selling second hand items. I believe that it’s a great way to be more zero waste without spending more money.
Selling second hand items is no doubt a challenge, it takes way more time than donating it and it might also mean spending your item going to the post office or participating in a fleamarket. But I find that selling second hand items helps me to consume less, the amount of time that takes me to sell something tells me that everything that I buy has a price – not the amount of money I paid for an item, but instead the price of having something that is not necessary for other people. When I fail to sell a book or something that I own, I’m reminded of how much there’s out there, how much stuff will end up going to the trash because no one wants it. For me, this exercise of trying to sell my stuff is helpful for that reason. I’m by no means perfect, very far from it but having this reminder does help me restrict my impulses.
I thought it’d be interesting to share how much I earned selling my used items in 2021.
First of all, I’d like to say that I don’t sell clothing, first of all most of the clothes I use I wear until it’s too worn out to wear which makes it a not very good candidate for selling. Second, everything that I don’t wear, I bring to swap markets as a currency for other clothes. I wanted to preface by saying this because I believe a lot of people do earn money by selling their clothes.
So what’s my total?
35€ – Desk – I loved my desk but it was simply not working for the work at home situation and after a whole year, I decided to make a switch and sell my desk. I had already bought this second hand and although I didn’t recoup the money that I bought it for (nor did I expect to!) but receiving 35€ for it felt great!
50.47€ – Books – I tried my best to sell some of the books that I had at home, I still have plenty to sell but I’m quite happy with this amount, it’s not the amount of books that I wanted to sell but it’s still something.
