Working Through the Mountain

I've been getting so much listed! You know I have all these boxes and boxes of fresh inventory to get listed. I decided to start with the homeschool material, because it's the bulkiest and heaviest, but it's also the easiest to list. Snap one picture of the cover. Use a short description template. Change the details and done. I got 12 listed Friday, 13 listed Saturday, and 20 listed tonight. That's one box of curriculum. There's still 2 more half-boxes of curriculum over there.

I'm cracking down on myself. I WILL get through that pile as quickly as possible. Next up I'll do the basket of clothing, because it's also pretty quick and easy. I'm concerned about what might happen to this stuff if I leave it out here too long. If I let my guard down, my three-year-old will get into it all and ruin it. Ack.

I know I promised pictures of stuff as I get it listed. Do you really want to see pictures of 40-some homeschool books? Use your imagination :) But here are the listings, if you're really that interested. A couple of them were my own materials, but most of them are from Melissa. (Hi, Melissa!)

**********

Last summer, I set a financial goal for myself. I wanted to save $10,000 by December 2012 so we could hire someone to completely finish our basement. We desperately need as much upstairs living space as we can get, especially as the kids get older. We have 4 kids sharing 2 bedrooms right now. Our oldest really needs her own room. No 12 year old girl should have to share a room with her 4 year old sister. So the plan was to get the basement finished and move my eBay stuff downstairs.

There are a couple hitches in this plan. #1 - no matter how well the basement is finished, there will always be dampness. I can't risk ruining my inventory by storing it in an always-damp basement. #2 - once my husband graduates from nursing school, he plans to get a job nearer to our church (an hour away) and we hope to move closer to that town. Why sink $10k into a sub-par basement, only to move 2 years later?

So there's a new financial goal - save $5,000 by the end of this summer. I really don't foresee any problems with that, as long as I stay focused and quit blowing my money on stupid stuff. Ahem. I'm going to buy a monstrous storage shed. My current eBay room is 10' x 10'. I've got my eye on a 14' x 24' shed.

My $5,000 goal should be enough to buy the shed, baseboard heat, and a window air conditioning unit. I'm very, VERY excited about this goal. It's less expensive (yay for my bank account!), it'll happen significantly sooner than the basement would (yay for my daughter!), and we can take it with us when we move (yay for common sense!) I'm looking forward to having all my eBay mess OUT of our house (yay for everyone's sanity!)

**********

Today's sales have been great! Very steady, all day long. I've finally found the magic price to get my Florsheim shoes moving. I've had quite a few pairs just sitting here for over a year. I sold 3 pairs in the last week and a half, after I lowered my price. $35 is the magic number. Yay for getting rid of old inventory! (Lots of celebrating in this post)

I'm so sick of this bowl. SICK of it! I sold a set of 3 nesting bowls in this Gooseberry pattern awhile ago for $70, so I thought for sure this single large bowl would do well. Nope. I've tried EVERYTHING to move this stupid thing. Sales, high prices, low prices, best offer, free shipping. Nothing. I'm sick of it. It was time for it to go, so I knocked the price down to $10 + shipping and it finally sold. Stupid thing.

Here's one pair of the Florsheims that I sold today. The other pair was burgundy loafers, and they're going to Canada.

I bought this set of Goosebumps books awhile ago at Goodwill when the whole set was the half-price color. I paid $8 for all of them. I just didn't feel like messing with them and taking pics and describing the condition, so there they sat (in my way on my packaging table, I might add) for weeks. I finally listed them the other day and they sold already this morning. Oops. Underpriced. But they're gone, and I'm totally happy with the price I got for them. They're actually headed to a town 45 minutes north of me.

**********

I also had two large shoe cream orders today - one for 10 jars to the UK and one for 11 jars to Washington state. My stock is getting dangerously low on that stuff. I'll need to place an order this weekend, I suspect.

**********

Guess that's it. This time change has us all so messed up. We have an ugly, over-scheduled day tomorrow, so we're taking a planned no-school day. Too bad I can't spend it being productive, rather than running all over creation for appointments and meetings. Ugh.