KonMari 2017 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

grunnie

My New Year's resolution was to decorate the whole house or get someone in to decorate the house. But having 8 of the family today ( a day late ) for their Christmas lunch and after much debate they said the only room needing doing was the kitchen.:DI said I was replacing the dresser and my huge table and chairs. DIL number 2 pounced before I said anything else so she gets them. Sorted.After I get the room decorated -first time this century_ I can get a smaller table and lighter chairs as I struggle shifting them when I wash the floor. After Kming my kitchen I don't need the dresser as the few cookery books can go in the bookcase.
Hope you have all had a great Christmas.
My Christmas meal was a day late as having 3 sons and dils I always said they could go to their inlaws for Christmas if they wanted and to me for a meal whenever they wanted.

kaz13

Thank you for that, I do sell on eBay and my husband laughs and says that if I sold everything for £1 - I'd soon be rich ! As there is that much stuff in the house !!
I give a lot of my things to a friend who does car boots and we split the money, but I don't like passing on antique items as she only ever gets a few pounds.
But I am not buying anything in the sales this time around, as I will carry on clearing out.
Hopefully this time next year, everywhere will be clear.

daisy_1571

I'd REALLY like to go km 'let it go' right now - watched Frozen earlier this evening (yes, I know, we were officially the last people in the world to see it) and that song is just endlessly going round in my head still :snow_laug. It was a surprisingly good film though and I really enjoyed it. The let it go song is a spectacular bit of the film, I can see why it was such a hit. Must have been amazing to see it at the pictures.

Other than that we were totally on top of Xmas this year. Was so organised in decoration and food. We had 9 to feed and I a) have trouble getting the beans and the toast hot at the same time and b) ALWAYS leave something on the hob, in the fridge, under the grill or in the oven on the few occasions i cook for more than mr daisy and me but this time I got 10 separate types of food all ready at the same time, all in their own dishes from a meat oven and a veggie oven onto a meat hotplate and a veggie hot plate. I was so organised and stress free. Thank you funny little lady who somehow got me organising myself and my house after 30odd years of running disorganised houses :rotfl:

Welcome new peeps, this will be you soon :beer:

Daisy

daisy_1571

Kaz

We have done almost all that greent wrote. You may find if things are real antiques that an auction house appraisal person would come to you and do an appraisal of what would be worth going into their sales. Then you have just one drop off and hopefully a bit of cash coming your way in a few weeks. After a while all the packaging and trekking to the post office etc just got wearing for me. I'm now looking at things and thinking 'can I be bothered for a tenner minus fees and my petrol and time and having it sitting about for another few weeks ? Nah, charity box and let them gain the funds.' It was great for the things we have got rid of plus lots of boxes, bubble wrap and brown paper also out the house so I count it all as a win but now I think my time is more important. You of course will know your own stuff and what best to do with it for you.

We sat with music magpie and ziffit open on computer with me reading out the bar codes and Mr daisy typing. Generally ziffit gave better prices but if neither wanted them then they went into a third box for charity shop. Ziffit paid up promptly and were bother free. Mm wanted a printed out label and we don't have a printer so that was a hassle (it didnt tell you that in their instructions on how 'easy' it was to use them) then they sent payment a couple of pounds less than they said they would. Considering a lot of books they were only paying a penny for, that was quite a few books they must have knocked off. And we know they were all in pristine condition as when Mr D has finished with a book you wouldn't even know it had ever been read. It was still worthwhile to get rid of so many books/cds/dvds in a oner but needless to say we will never be using mm again.

I haven't tried fb as can't be bothered with folk coming to the house but from the stuff I see advertised on local sites it must be worthwhile as i see the same people putting new posts up every so oftensure so they wouldbt be doing that if they weren't getting stuff sold i reckon.

Good luck with the clearing and be sure to update here with your progress

Daisy xx

GreyQueen

Between sellers' fees and buyers' fees, auctions are typically creaming off 40% of the price of anything they sell. These are bog-standard auctions, not the big city famous names, btw.

What that means is that the buyers, who are looking at getting stung an extra 20-25% on top of the hammer price will want to underpay by that amount, just to stand still, and then the auction will want 15-20 % from that from you as seller's fees. Nearly half the market value of whatever you have will disappear this way. I know a lot of dealers who are so disgusted with this that they rarely or never bother with auctions now.

You would be better off to directly approach dealers specialising in whatever field(s) of antiques you have to sell, if not selling privately to a collector.

Wanna laugh? One of the things I turned up today was a letter from my mother's former employer, thanking her for all her hard work, at the time she gave up paid employment when six months' gone with me. How the flippety that survived three house moves, over five decades of family life while simulatenously remaining uncreased and unstained (and un-enveloped) but apparently nearby but unseen by any of us, is quite beyond me.

Oh, and I found a cache of farthings with the cute little wren on them. Seventeen of them. And a pair of cufflinks in a 35mm film canister. Costume, not precious metal, regretfully.:rotfl:

greent

Even though auction houses take a lot in fees, it can be worthwhile. My uncle died around 18 months ago and was a magpie collector of tiny things and weird and wonderful things, none of which anyone thought was worth that much - maybe 20k - it all went into a local auction house (split over 2 sales - one was jewellery related, another random collectible things) - it raised (after all fees) almost 200k - showing that if you get the stuff to the right sale (rather than a random sale) you can do well. Much easier for anyone in the family at the time to deal with than listing things on ebay/ selling stuff separately (plus no one had any idea of the value!!!)

Karmacat

Wow, greent, that's quite something, it was certainly worth doing, then. We have that non-hallmarked silver to sell, which I asked about on here previously, though we haven't got round to doing anything with that. We have one or two books, and a painting, that will be worth selling - we think maybe £5k in total, and still worth it for us.

Pooky

I’ve been selling a lot of stuff on the bay of E lately, none of it antiques but some decent vintage bits I’ve collected along side clothes and ornaments I no longer wanted. I found that by sticking it as a “buy it now” instead of auction I was getting much better money - I know some people want the thrill of an auction but others just see it -want it....I played on that and it worked.

Need to kondo a few bits of plastic tatt that MIL thought we might like for Christmas....wind up reindeer and a snowman snow globe that’s 2inches high anyone? But on the whole everything was greatfully received.

DD’s did good and I got socks and perfume (both much needed) a couple of lovely new mugs (again very much needed after a spate of breaking things lately)and a set of lovely essential oils which will be very much enjoyed. Oh and some of the bath gel I love. All very useful and no chocolates which was amazing, I do like it but I’m one of those people that can eat one chocolate out of the box once a week and not need more whereas DH feels the need to eat an entire box in one hour in case they go off.

Just the leftover food kondo to do today, I do love having portions of turkey and gammon in the freezer for quick meals. Will cook up all the stragglers in the veg department too and get them frozen down.

Karmacat

Pooky wrote: »

I’ve been selling a lot of stuff on the bay of E lately, none of it antiques but some decent vintage bits I’ve collected along side clothes and ornaments I no longer wanted. I found that by sticking it as a “buy it now” instead of auction I was getting much better money - I know some people want the thrill of an auction but others just see it -want it....I played on that and it worked.

That's interesting, Pooky. Can I ask, are the charges the same (mostly that you don't get charged if it doesn't sell)? I'm very wary of doing BIN on ebay - I know it's all there on the website, but I'm never quite sure I've read *all* the small print that surrounds it.

Pooky

Karmacat wrote: »

That's interesting, Pooky. Can I ask, are the charges the same (mostly that you don't get charged if it doesn't sell)? I'm very wary of doing BIN on ebay - I know it's all there on the website, but I'm never quite sure I've read *all* the small print that surrounds it.

As you list you’re item you’ll be made aware of any fees for listing it (I haven’t paid a listing fee in years so I assume some categories are exempt). If your item doesn’t sell you can have it automatically realist for no charge (I have mine listed for 30 Days) and then you just pay a final selling fee at the end of each month, if you do sell it...(they send an invoice). It currently works out at 10% of my sales in fees but I allow for that with the price I list for.

As a selling platform for items that need to reach a higher audience, it works well. I don’t spend a lot of time on each listing, a couple of good photos and measurements if required and bobs your uncle. For larger items I use FB groups first. It’s also worth checking FB groups if you want to sell something unique or specific. DH is hugely into astronomy and there are lots of 2nd hand selling sites for that on there. Always handy to have a target audience already built.