Moving can be stressful😰… Not only for you, but also for the environment. At first I was so excited about my new destination, but only until I started to pack and waste stuff that I can’t take with me whether it’s something too old to be taken or something too expensive to transport. To say I planned to throw away a lot is to say nothing: cutlery, tables, shoes, exotic cleaning products used once, unpacked party kit, cocktail mixer and so on. My inner self rebelled against such a waste for two reasons. First, if you think about it, most of items to waste usually consist of plastic details; second, almost none of them could be placed in our recycling dumpster - they were to cumbersome. Besides, some of these things clearly lived their life, but others were in quite good conditions and it was a pity to let them go into oblivion. 📦
Sometimes we assume that a salvage value is no value. Yet there are so many people out there who still can’t afford even cheap essentials, they may be happy to get a table for free even in poor conditions. Although I was skeptical, I decided to try to give those things away. Thanks to nowadays technologies give-aways are easy as never before. And guess what? In the following 36 hours after I posted, all the things I advertised were gone! Not only I managed to prolong the life of those items, I also met so many grateful people who due to their financial struggles could only dream about new study table for their kids. And now they have it for $0!
These are the apps I found to be most useful:
💡 Letgo: has the most extensive customer base, I found that here things with small price ($4-7) turn over faster. Here you can sell everything from books to used cars.
💡 Offerup: worked best of all for me, I felt like users of this platform expect to get things for free, so I just followed this insight and it helped me to get rid of 3 bulky items in just 2 hours.
💡 Varage Sale: I didn’t sell here anything, but I’m confident it is because my commodities-to-sell where not really gender specific. If you have something appealing to female audience, ‘Varage Sale’ is the way to go, I believe.
💡 Facebook marketplace: lots of messages, but little effectiveness ! Because people uses FB as a network of contacts it’s an easy channel to communicate, but I’ve noticed people actively looking for (even free!) stuff. They search casually and from what I saw mostly for electronics (which I had none to offer).
💡 CPlus Craiglist: honestly, Craiglist’s app here is just to tell you not to use it! Every time I try to use it I get into weird stories like email phishing… This time I had no success there either.
The mail conclusion I made upon my sales campaign was actually to buy more eco-friendly furniture in my next apartment and not to buy anything that I can really try to live without. Because nothing is more contrary to the no waste mission than constant consumerism.
