I just have way too much stuff, collected over the years, all stashed up in boxes collecting dust (amongst other things).  Why? I keep saying to myself: ‘Hey, I’m going to hold onto that… I won’t sell it for much, and I may use it some day again’.

I’m sure you can relate.

But I’m about to change that all.  A friend of mine recently explained how the stuff around you affects your physical/emotional/mental headspace.

As woo woo as it may be, I do now agree with him. For example, I find that whenever I travel, I just seem to become more ‘productive’.  Same as when I am sat in a coffee working on my laptop; there are just fewer distractions.

So I decided to start on a quest of selling my old stuff to clear my head, and here’s a few tips on how you too can do that.

I’ve attempted on many occasions to sell them off, but always found the listing on ebay process a bit of a pain.  Same with Gumtree, esp when they cancel your ad!

I’ve been looking to get my VAs to do the ads for me.  This went pretty well in the past, but being the picky bastard I am, I always find that I’m having to edit through their ads, and might as well just write them myself.

There is progress however; as this week, I managed to clear a nice portable DVD player which has just been sitting around the house collecting dust.  I also managed to sell my extra 3 mobile broadband dongle and a couple of mp3 players.

And I realised there are a few things that really help:

1. Just do it – no matter how much rationalizing or organizing you do, you’ll find that no techniques or tactics will help move along.  So you just have to say you’re going to sell xyz, and just do it.

2. Take photos – This was my first big step – I went around the house and took pics of all the stuff I want to sell.  Instead of doing 1 ad at a time, I found that by having all my photos, it rewires my subsconscious into thinking that I am about to get rid of all this stuff.

3. Get them onto the PC, and make it accessible – I had old photos of stuff I’ve been saying I will sell, but I just never got around to.  And part of the reason is because it was hard to find them.  I now stick them into Picasa and upload them online, so that it makes it easy for me to write listings.

4. Don’t aim for perfection – you own’t get your retail value, and you may even make a loss.  Go for the 80/20 on this, and just clear the space by writing a basic description.  Once you have the ball rolling, you’ll find it easier to complete.

5. Keep trying – you may not sell the item on the first run, but keep reposting / listing / looking for new places to sell.  The most recent items I sold have all been from listing in a place I would have never previously considered – an offline classifieds paper for free.  I also managed to sell a couple of things that were sitting on Gumtree for yonkers, because it made it to the front page of Google!

6. If you can’t sell it, just give it away – like Gollum, we all want to hold onto our precious – but ask yourself whether you see yourself using that item in the next month.  If not, you probably don’t need it.  And if you can’t sell it, why not do something good – give it away.  You’ll feel better after.

I suppose in that list, one can also include going to car boot sales.  I however am not a big fan of waking up at 6am on a Sunday, so this has been out the window for me.  Maybe if I still don’t manage to clear stock, I will have to consider this for next year.

If you have any other tips for getting rid of your old stuff, please leave your thoughts below. 

[Comedy Central]

Here is a partial list:

• The bathroom that doesn’t work. As he’s noticed, several
  planes that he has been on have at least one broken toilet. Get rid of
  that bathroom. Weight saved.
• Duty free carts. Who needs
  to buy that stuff on board a flight anyway? But, as Elliot points out,
  the carts do make the airlines money.
• Federal air marshals since they are not particularly cost effective at saving lives –and they fly for free
• In-flight magazines. (No, no, no Elliot. I NEED in-flight magazines. I read them from cover to cover.)
• A flight attendant. (Sorry, Heather)
• A pilot. (Sorry, Ken)
• XL
  passengers. Elliot is one of those. He points out that he’s tall and
  lanky so he poses a bit of a problem when it comes to getting him to
  fit in the space that he is allotted.

Can’t agree more myself.

[Gadling]

Well, here you are at your college graduation. And I know what you’re thinking: “Gimme the sheepskin and get me outta here!” But not so fast. First you have to listen to a commencement speech.
Don’t moan. I’m not going to “pass the wisdom of one generation down to the next.” I’m a member of the 1960s generation. We didn’t have any wisdom.

We were the moron generation. We were the generation that believed we could stop the Vietnam War by growing our hair long and dressing like circus clowns. We believed drugs would change everything — which they did, for John Belushi. We believed in free love. Yes, the love was free, but we paid a high price for the sex.
My generation spoiled everything for you. It has always been the special prerogative of young people to look and act weird and shock grown-ups. But my generation exhausted the Earth’s resources of the weird. Weird clothes — we wore them. Weird beards — we grew them. Weird words and phrases — we said them. So, when it came your turn to be original and look and act weird, all you had left was to tattoo your faces and pierce your tongues. Ouch. That must have hurt. I apologize.
So now, it’s my job to give you advice. But I’m thinking: You’re finishing 16 years of education, and you’ve heard all the conventional good advice you can stand. So, let me offer some relief:
1. Go out and make a bunch of money!
Here we are living in the world’s most prosperous country, surrounded by all the comforts, conveniences and security that money can provide. Yet no American political, intellectual or cultural leader ever says to young people, “Go out and make a bunch of money.” Instead, they tell you that money can’t buy happiness. Maybe, but money can rent it.
There’s nothing the matter with honest moneymaking. Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino’s box. In a free society, with the rule of law and property rights, no one loses when someone else gets rich.
2. Don’t be an idealist!
Don’t chain yourself to a redwood tree. Instead, be a corporate lawyer and make $500,000 a year. No matter how much you cheat the IRS, you’ll still end up paying $100,000 in property, sales and excise taxes. That’s $100,000 to schools, sewers, roads, firefighters and police. You’ll be doing good for society. Does chaining yourself to a redwood tree do society $100,000 worth of good?
Idealists are also bullies. The idealist says, “I care more about the redwood trees than you do. I care so much I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. It broke up my marriage. And because I care more than you do, I’m a better person. And because I’m the better person, I have the right to boss you around.”
Get a pair of bolt cutters and liberate that tree.
Who does more for the redwoods and society anyway — the guy chained to a tree or the guy who founds the “Green Travel Redwood Tree-Hug Tour Company” and makes a million by turning redwoods into a tourist destination, a valuable resource that people will pay just to go look at?
So make your contribution by getting rich. Don’t be an idealist.
3. Get politically uninvolved!
All politics stink. Even democracy stinks. Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. I’d be standing here with my bellybutton exposed. Imagine deciding the dinner menu by family secret ballot. I’ve got three kids and three dogs in my family. We’d be eating Froot Loops and rotten meat.
But let me make a distinction between politics and politicians. Some people are under the misapprehension that all politicians stink. Impeach George W. Bush, and everything will be fine. Nab Ted Kennedy on a DUI, and the nation’s problems will be solved.
But the problem isn’t politicians — it’s politics. Politics won’t allow for the truth. And we can’t blame the politicians for that. Imagine what even a little truth would sound like on today’s campaign trail:
“No, I can’t fix public education. The problem isn’t the teachers unions or a lack of funding for salaries, vouchers or more computer equipment The problem is your kids!”
4. Forget about fairness!
We all get confused about the contradictory messages that life and politics send.
Life sends the message, “I’d better not be poor. I’d better get rich. I’d better make more money than other people.” Meanwhile, politics sends us the message, “Some people make more money than others. Some are rich while others are poor. We’d better close that ‘income disparity gap.’ It’s not fair!”
Well, I am here to advocate for unfairness. I’ve got a 10-year-old at home. She’s always saying, “That’s not fair.” When she says this, I say, “Honey, you’re cute. That’s not fair. Your family is pretty well off. That’s not fair. You were born in America. That’s not fair. Darling, you had better pray to God that things don’t start getting fair for you.” What we need is more income, even if it means a bigger income disparity gap.
5. Be a religious extremist!
So, avoid politics if you can. But if you absolutely cannot resist, read the Bible for political advice — even if you’re a Buddhist, atheist or whatever. Don’t get me wrong, I am not one of those people who believes that God is involved in politics. On the contrary. Observe politics in this country. Observe politics around the world. Observe politics through history. Does it look like God’s involved?
The Bible is very clear about one thing: Using politics to create fairness is a sin. Observe the Tenth Commandment. The first nine commandments concern theological principles and social law: Thou shalt not make graven images, steal, kill, et cetera. Fair enough. But then there’s the tenth: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.”
Here are God’s basic rules about how we should live, a brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts. And, right at the end of it we read, “Don’t envy your buddy because he has an ox or a donkey.” Why did that make the top 10? Why would God, with just 10 things to tell Moses, include jealousy about livestock?
Well, think about how important this commandment is to a community, to a nation, to a democracy. If you want a mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don’t whine about what the people across the street have. Get rich and get your own.
Now, one last thing:
6. Don’t listen to your elders!
After all, if the old person standing up here actually knew anything worth telling, he’d be charging you for it.
P.J. O’Rourke, a correspondent for the Weekly Standard and the Atlantic, is the author, most recently, of “On The Wealth of Nations.” A longer version of this article appears in Change magazine, which reports on trends and issues in higher education.

Source: [LA Times]

[PopCrunch]