Modern Alchemy: Turning Treasures into Cash and Why.

My daily adventures continue. This week began with a wonderful overnight in a four star hotel with an awesome evening meal included. Betty is enrolled in a medical research project, and the sponsors, wanting her to be available very early in the dawnlight of morning, housed her just a short cab ride from the facility. I was just supercargo again, but shared all the benefits of elegant living for a few hours. Even a malfunctioning door entry system could not dampen the experience.

I want to briefly mention my continuing experience with a major (THE major?) on-line auction service where folk can peddle to others any conceivable goods in a variety of ways. Learning the ropes and rules and hints and kinks of the ebay world has been like butting my head repeatedly against a brick wall. Daughter PKS held my hand initially, as I established accounts and passwords and enrolled in a funds handling adjunct called PayPal and had to open a local account and obtain a separate credit card for back-up of future dealings. Mostly through that maze and into the quagmire of individual sales, I am just now beginning to get the hang and flow of the process.

I have pack-ratted stuff for years. All of it either good, valuable, or of personal interest. But most of these attic and garage treasures get little actual use. The stuff just sets in boxes and is buried deeper by more boxes of stuff. Until recently that is, when I think I started to turn a personal corner in my addiction to garage sales and the accumulation of more whatchamacallits. I am sort of in the process of becoming a minimalist in spirit, if not yet in fact. Visiting third world countries has also altered my outlook on personal materialism. And I discover that fascinating finds and other "junque" has a limited time of appeal before it becomes just ordinary in-the-way junk again.

As part of my personal reformation, I have started using on-line sites like craig'slist to offer my wonders to a hungry world. This is an amazing system. I list an item which I no longer want to keep and someone from the local area jumps in their car and drives for miles to my driveway, hands me cash money, and takes away my unwanted surplus. What a deal. Ebay is a little more time consuming. Decide what to offer for sale, take a digital picture, wrap the item for mailing, post it on the sale site, manage the listing for a week, collect payment and eventually send it away to someone else. The outcome, however, is cash and recovered space in attic and garage. Wonderful. Especially should we actually move to smaller quarters in the fordreamable future.

For example, yesterday I sold four items for more than $50 and later today as much more will come in on two of the four items still being offered. Recently I have sold out of my driveway more than $300 worth of goodies to three buyers. At a recycling location, I recently unloaded my scrap metals from the yard for $67 in cash. Let's see, there is still some ham radio gear, a ton of books, a lot of duplicate tools, some building blocks, spy cameras, and other trinkets that have only claimed closet or drawer space for years (sometimes decades of years). Most of the "I-might-need-that-someday" stuff is possible fodder for this purging.

I am really trying to put it all away in that "dream on account". Maybe a big purchase need will come along, or a trip to some tropical beach paradise, or another mission related travel opportunity will arise. It is possible all this conversion of things might be needed just to purchase gasoline when it is $7.00 a gallon.

Thoreau was right on when he explained how quickly our possessions come to possess us. It is hard to travel if you have a garden (or bonsai) or pets or are caring for someone else or someone elses place. The barn needs maintenance, the horse has to be fed and shod and curried, the chickens need water, the fences need mending ............. My house need painting, the deck wants attention, there are major trees and limbs which should be tended to soon. Stuff is living my life for me. So some of it at least is for sale. Some of it I will give away. Until a lot of it moves on, I can't move on. What do I have that you need?

It's kind of fun. And seeing the bank balance grow is rewarding in itself. Most of all, I am feeling a little better about my own attitudes about "having" and "holding" and "wanting" and "it's mine" Some are already hinting that they don't need to carry something away every time they come to visit. True, but could't you use the bag of planting mix or this roll of wire? How about some canning jars? or this wooden ice cream maker? Hmmmm?