Turn your clutter into money.

During yesterday's talk talk I thought about things I know about. The past few months I have been tasked with creating more space. So here are some ways of clearing a room without putting it in a landfill, please recycle:

1. Time is money too, if you have a good job, sometimes the simple solutions are the quickest, put your stuff in the curb/alley with a FREE sign, have a garage sale, yard sale or send a message on Craigslist saying that you can pick it up here, take it to a user group meeting, leave on the back of the room, BarCamp, action it off, raffle it, give it away if it doesn't have enough value to other people. Remember that your trash could be someone else's only TV.
   
2. Amazon is a very easy way to search for your item and list it, if you are the low bidder for it, in my experience, sell in less then a week. Some items are amazingly popular and you wouldn't expect it. Especially if you don't have any other bidders. My popular item was a 20" TV/VCR old style CRT went for $199+33 shipping. This will cost you time and you have to be prepared to ship within 2 days of the email, so if your item lingers, or you go on vacation, delist it, you don't want the hit in reputation.
   
3. eBay, if in a hurry use a fixed price, if you can wait a week, action it.
4. Your blog, maybe someone in your area, that you know that reads it wants it.
5. Bring it to a meeting, put in the back of the room, be realistic, don't bring an obscure part to a meeting of people who couldn't possibly have a use for it. If it has a mailing list, advance notice might be a good idea.
6. If a popular item, maybe you can action it off at the meeting, or give away as a prize.
7. Don't buy or take things you don't need from garage sales.
8. Garage sale! Usually the quickest way to clear a garage.
9. Yard sale, well not much different, but depending on your living arrangements I guess.
10. eWaste, recycling, trashing, hopefully this is your last option, as it is the worst in terms of the environment, not all things get rescued from the general trash, but if you have homeless in your back alley, perhaps.
    

At some point I will attempt to make a slide deck with pictures to use at a LUG meeting or BarCamp, after all we all have this problem with space at some point.
To the left, my current pile of stuff that needs to go. Actually I still need that VCR, sold all the others, but does it work? Don't remember, the Tivo is something I wish I knew how to use, but haven't invested the time, do need it, hey I use that headset sometimes for Skype, but have another, I could sell, speakers, maybe need those someday, but not right now, just get it all out, I always need space, besides I keep getting more free stuff given to me, if I bring it home it is probably cooler then what I have here.