mother teresa of gumtree

I have been mentally and physically preparing for this stint of unemployment that is coming up as of tomorrow by doing a few things. First off I sublet my room for a few months. In order to get the room ready for someone to move in I, obviously, had to move my crap out. This is actually quite a useful exercise that I now advocate everyone doing at least once a year. I literally got rid of half my wardrobe (if in doubt, throw it out) and threw away countless other tons of crap.

I didn’t exactly throw away much stuff. Instead I chose to donate all of the clothing and shoes to Oxfam. After I finished this mission to cleanse my soul / erm, room, I went on a larger scale mission to begin ridding myself of all the garbage that I have accumulated in the past few years. And there was a lot of stuff… My initial train of thought was to sell this stuff on eBay. But the thought of the hassle of dealing with closing auctions, shipping, non-payments, UGH! No! Then I thought to sell the stuff on Gumtree. But again, didn’t want to deal with haggling people and all their issues. Finally I came across the Freebies category on Gumtree and thought what the hey and posted some stuff.

And then they came. Bring me your sick, poor and desperate. Really. Within minutes of posting things I had my phone ringing off the hook. People literally claimed every single thing that I posted within 5 minutes. And some of the stuff bewilders me as to why they might want it, such as Roley’s dirty litter box.

What did I end up giving away in the end?

  • Exercise ball + pump – this was a big hit
  • Logitech speaker and subwoffer
  • HP deskjet printer
  • Arlie’s dirty aquarium
  • Indoor grill
  • Box of house records
  • Trolley for someone’s mum – ahhh nice
  • Litterbox
  • VHS + tapes
  • Backpack
  • Sewing machine – ok I made £40 off of this

    Not bad for a day’s work of giving stuff away… As they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure (on Gumtree).