Ketchup

I know, I know. I've gone from faithful daily blogger to ... this patheticness. I've been spending most of my evenings listing, listing, listing. And the evenings that I'm not listing, it's usually because I'm doing something else. So either way - no time to blog.

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I dropped off all my stuff at the kids' consignment sale this morning. I had originally signed up for a 3-hour volunteer shift, but then she dangled the "70% of your sales" carrot in front of my nose and I bit. I left there having signed up for a 9-hour shift on Sunday. Eek.

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I just finished filing our taxes. Phew. I don't know why I put it off as long as I did. I was expecting to really owe a lot of money, but we actually ended up getting a pretty decent refund. SUCH a load off my shoulders to have that done.

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I've set an official financial goal for myself, in order to have my storage shed by the end of the summer. I'll need to transfer an average of $500 per week out of my Paypal account into my checking account, while leaving as much in my checking account as possible in the meantime - which is always hard with the kids' extra-curricular activites, etc, but I'll do my best. I will try harder to curb the spending that I CAN control: restaurants, shopping, etc... I seriously need to get my thrift shopping under control. I have enough inventory here to last me a couple more weeks, a month or so if I dig hard enough.

Hopefully, by having a firm weekly goal, I will be better able to keep focused on cutting my spending. It's pretty sickening to look at my sales and see how much I've made, and then look at my scrawny little checkbook balance and realize that it all went to pizza and inconsequential nothings...

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Just a quick sales highlight from the last couple days, because I need to hit the hay:

As usual, I've been selling a lot of homeschool books and denim skirts. I sold 2 denim skirts just yesterday, in fact. I have discovered that my Goodwill seems to accidentally hang their denim skirts in with the jeans. (But that's my secret... don't tell anyone!)  Yesterday, I found the exact same skirt that I was wearing. That was kind of cool. I bought it, because mine has a hole in it and the new one didn't. :-P

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Don't be afraid to list Christmas items year-round. I sold this set to an Australian buyer this evening:

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I bought this vintage Sears buttonholer at Goodwill one day without being able to look it up on my phone. It sold for my full asking price. I seem to be getting a little better at following my instinct when I can't research (well, except that Kodak instant camera I bought yesterday, but we're not going to talk about that...)

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These both sold to the same buyer the other day. That was pretty cool. I never get repeat buyers except for shoe cream. They're both headed to Canada, and for nice prices too! The buyer did kind of push her luck on a third item, offering me $5.99 for something I have listed for $23.99. I was perfectly willing to give her a decent deal, since she was buying multiple items, but that was a little much...

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I also sold another set of books super-fast, which tells me I again underpriced them. I've not got the hang of pricing books yet. This particular set hadn't sold for over $14 recently, so I priced mine at $16.99 and they sold the next morning. That tells me I could have sold them for more, so I'll definitely pick them up when I find them for a quarter or so. Goodness knows they're easy enough to find - I see them everywhere!

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I haven't forgotten about the blog topics that I promised last week. I just haven't had a minute to write them yet. But I will - I promise!

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!)

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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!)

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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.

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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.

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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.