The Great 'De-junk your house the MoneySaving way' Hunt

caroline7758

If you've got books to sell and want to be green as well, try www.greenmetropolis.comwhere you get about £3 per paperback and 5p of your sale goes to the Woodland Trust.

GeorgieW

loulabelle44 wrote:

Does anyone have any advice on what to do with old magazines?

I have a large collection of teen magazines from the late 80s/early 90s - titles like Big!, Number One, Fast Forward, Look-In.

They are in pretty good condition and it seems a shame to dump them in the recyc box.

I've looked on eBay, and there doesn't really seem to be a market for them. I'm at a loss, so they are still piled up all over my house. I'm not looking for big money for them. I just hate the thought of all that history being pulped.

Any suggestions?

I'm surprised you couldn't find items like this on eBay as in my experience (all be it about a year ago now) there is a good market for those type/age of magazines. Make sure you mention famous faces & pop groups, especially those still around with a loyal fan base like Phillip Schofield, George Michael, Madonna, Kylie & Take That.

There used to be a way to get more experienced eBayers to sell your items for you (they took a % of course), could be worth looking into.

Don't bin them, it'd be a waste. If all else fails I'll have them! :T

mrsbex

patwa wrote:

Hi, could I join?

I'm looking to buy a computer which I will do anyway, but I'm being pressured to clear out this room and get rid of stuff I no longer need, bulk buys that I bought to sell but never got around to it, etc.

Two blocks I'm having, which I know are totally ridiculous but can't get around:
1. I'm not prepared to make a loss, even though half the stuff will never sell near it's buying price.
2. I'm unwilling to risk listing fees, etc for items that might not sell.

Both stupid, I know they're both inevitable, but just can't get around it.

Trying to start out with free listings, local paper, gumtree.com, scot-ads, etc. No luck so far.

I have found that a card in the local newsagent etc, with a picture of what you're selling works well, and usually only a few pence per week!

littlescarlet

gizzie121 wrote:

I really want to get my daughter a Wii for her birthday in March, so my husband and I decided to sell the stuff we don't want anymore on ebay, to raise the money for the Wii, instead of trying to find it out of his wage.

I thought it would take a few months to make the near on £200 to buy one, but we made over £200 on the first batch of stuff!!!!! I was gobsmacked.

I need a new scanner too! So that's the next goal. Need to raise around £100.

Can anybody tell me though if it's difficult to sell stuff on Amazon???

gizzie, its DEAD easy to sell stuff on Amazon. Setting up an account takes ten minutes especially if you already have PayPal and listing is so easy as you just put in the ISBN and they even provide a picture for you! I have found that text books and self help books sell best - don't bother with novels unless they can't be found cheaply from other sellers - take these to your local market and exhange them on a second hand book stall, a few at a time. If you take a load they won't give you much for them

Ken68

Get all my books cheap anyway...10p..20pence and when finished with them leave 'em on a bus.

mad-mum_3

I am a paperwork hoarder and had a room full of bills, receipts, study notes, correspondance etc going back 15 (or more) years. Realism has dawned and have been having a massive clear out. I shred/burn anything with personal details and recylce anything else. but my main saviour is my scanner as I have not fully got over my hoarding instinct so I have been scanning things I am unsure about getting rid of.
I have been laughed at for keeping documents but my husband was injured at work and we had to sue his employers and we included the additional costs of him being at home during the time he was off work and I was able to clearly evidence this from gas and electric bills. Also I have been able to prove that my new more economical gas boiler was in fact fitted incorrectly and as a result we had increased bills - result was a full refund of the difference plus an extra amount for goodwill from the company fitting it and of course rectification of the fitting problems for free.

Just got a log burning stove and as a result reducing my heating costs and will look forward to seeing a reduction compared to last years heating bills (all scanned rtaher than keeping paper files)

Going to donate all the leaver arch files I save to school and may even be able to sell the bookcase they were all on. So i suppose that is money saving!

susieb1967

Munkeepye wrote:

Five and a half years went by and I paid £80 per month by direct debit.

:eek: :eek: :eek:
sooooooo glad you got this sorted!!!!

HappySad

Munkeepye wrote:

We moved to our present house six years ago from two properties. We couldn't fit all our 'stuff' in, so I arranged for it all to be taken into storage. Five and a half years went by and I paid £80 per month by direct debit. We only intended to be here a short while, but are still here. Finally a light went on in my head and I decided that I needed to deal with the storage and asked the storage company to 'bring it on'. It took three men, 40 minutes to unload everything.

What a load of crap from my former life! I have moved on, my tastes have changed, and I have everything I need, functionally and aestheticly. I made numerous trips to the tip, ebayed some things, local free ads other things, charity shop and car boot faired other stuff. Some even crept back into the loft where it will probably remain for years.

If you don't use it, you don't need it. Don't treat storage as a solution - it is a problem that will come back to haunt you and cost you dearly. Only use storage if the items are of high monetary or sentimental value. Always look for alternatives - pay an old person £200 per year for use of their garage. Whatever you do, don't pay good money for a storage company to look after your junk until you are ready to dispose of it.

I agree with you so much on that. Storage is mainly used by people (including me) to store stuff that you are very unlikely to use at all. I had to completely clear out the loft for a loft conversion and I was able to reduce the stuff by half. Now the house is being decorated we are getting rid of about 1/4 to 1/3 or our stuff that we don't really use at all!!! All that extra stuff is taking up valuable house space that we want to live in.

I am now over the next month working on all areas of the house to make more space for life & movement and less space for stuff. Dh & I will be going through all our clothes, toiletries, books & papers. Our bathroom & kitchen are very small so we have not been able to accummulate unwanted stuff because there would be nowhere to put them.. but all the other rooms need sorting out.

I think that the more storage you have the more unwanted stuff you accummulate. I have redesign our office to have less storage and that way we are going to be forces to have less stuff. We are now moving into the habbit on just keeping thethings that we actually use (like in the kitchen & bathroom).

Freecycle is great for off loading things quickly where you won't be able to sell or have not got the time to sell.

Our home is feeling bigger and more spacious all the time now that we are cleaning more space everywhere. We are able to find things more quickly also.

LESS is definately More In our society we have too much stuff and we definately (me too) have too much stuff. So in our case less is definately more .. less stuff leads to having more money to spend on what you really value and less stuff means more space in your home to move about and live.

greenbase

I have recently opened a shop in Poole, Dorset. We work like a dress agency selling baby and pre-school clothes toys and equipment. It's a great way of recycling quickly and easily. Helping you to get some cash back for the mountains of stuff you've bought for your young familiy (we all do it!!), and helping others to get great items, they may not have been able to afford, at great prices. Bring your items to us, clean and in good condition, and we'll sell them on your behalf. We take everything you need from maternity to pre-school, with the exception of mattresses and plug in electricals.

Next Generation Trading Post

HugoSP

Good quality clothes - 50 50 shops.

Cheaper clothes in good order - charity shops or pass to friends. My clothes tend to get worn out completely by me as I do a lot of building work.

Furniture - tends to go into rented properties. We rent out some properties and the old furniture gets lined up for them when we've got the space. Sometimes it gets sold via freeads or goes via freecycle.

When a relative died a few years ago we put a lot of stuff from the houses via auction houses. There were some antiques and some bric a brack. A relative sorted out all the first edition books and we made a mint on those. Other books etc and other stuff we thought was of no value made several hundred quid. We even put some of our own stuff through the auction house, as some of it was being replaced with items that we inherited. We were very surprised with what sold and for how much.

Old car parts. I bought a number of parts for a vehicle I had. I still had some of them left when I sold the vehicle. I contacted the manufacturers/retailers where they originated from and found out which vehicles they are listed for and then put them on e bay and the local freeads. Some have gone for good prices. I would be grateful if anyone knew some good websites to get rid of the rest of these.

I took one set of genuine Renault brake pads that were still in their box to the place I bought my new Nissan/Renault van from. They are a Nissan and Renault dealer. I asked if they would fit the van I had just bought. the Parts manager told me that they wouldn't but offered to swap them for some that would, assuring me that they always have a need for the ones I had, so using them would not be a problem. Needless to say I took him up on his offer.

I am remodelling our house at the moment and have removed a large mount of copper and some lead from the property, plus quite a lot of ferrous metal. All metal is set aside and when I have a trailer load I take it to the scrapyard up the road. I tend to get around £30 to £40 a time. I have removed large piles of scrap from one or two other people upon their request. Our local pub was clearing out their cellar and had an old cooker body and several table leg frames that needed to go. He simply put them in a pile in the carpark and I drove past with the trailer and loaded them up with my other scrap.

Some items from my properties have fetched good money. I sold a couple of steel windows and a cas iron bath to one guy for £25 some years ago. The bath was not a popular style and was probably only worth scrap. In addition I sold some cupboard doors, a calor gas water heater, a coal bunker and a toilet. In this house I have a Rayburn woodburner to get rid of.

When I need to buy a number of an item I try to think about how I can self finance the purchase. For example we needed 2 small sheds. One to turn into a chicken coup, and the other for a rented property.

I contacted a DIY store and spoke to the manager there. I struck a deal where I got 5 damaged/incomplete sheds and a UPVC window for our flat for about £85.

We managed to make 4 good sheds, maybe needing a little work out of the 5 'kits'. We kept 2 and sold the other 2 at £50 each. We had no problems finding buyers and hence we went to very little effort to move them on. We ended up with 2 free sheds, one free window and £15 towards fuel.