Ebay is Not for Neat-nicks

Have you ever run across something you no longer need and thought to yourself..."I could sell that on eBay". Many people make lots of money on eBay (I'm not one of them!).

Some of you may know that I've been selling stuff on eBay. I thought it would be a nice little way to supplement my retirement income. What I did not know is that it would TAKE OVER MY LIFE!

I don't have items listed all the time, but when I do they can be found at:

http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/sandance

These days most of the items I list are for a friend. This is the collection of his wife, who was my dear friend...mostly Disney and Coca-Cola collectibles.

This week I had 24 items listed. 12 of them sold. Most of these items were larger than the standard little USPS Priority Mail boxes. Some of them had rather odd dimensions and required digging deep for boxes...trying many to see if they would work.

I forage for shipping supplies wherever I can, because I HATE to have to buy shipping supplies. The post office will supply Priority Mail shipping boxes, but they don't come in all the sizes I need. Which means I usually have a lot of box and packing material clutter. As it happens, I have just received a nice donation of shipping supplies, including a gigantic bag of foam peanuts...which takes up as much space as a recliner!

I used to have a cute little office. A desk, bookshelves, a nice closet with all my weaving yarns....ah....how well I remember the good old pre-eBay days!


This is what my nice office looks like this evening, after a marathon eBay packing session:


That red table cloth is what I use as a backdrop for many of my photos of eBay-bound items.
The floor model Ott Lite lets me take photos without flash, minimizing glare. The boxes under the table (yes, there IS a table under all that stuff) are full of items that need to be listed on eBay...someday...

I used to have a dining room. For a few short months it was my weaving and summer sewing room. (The real sewing room is next to the attic and really hot in the summer.) Now the poor former dining room is the eBay packing material and eBay item staging facility. It's where I keep the items I'm selling for a friend...while they're waiting to be listed on eBay.

This is what my formerly cute little room now looks like. If you look really hard you can find the BIG 48" LeClerc loom and a Canadian Production spinning wheel with a big 30" drive wheel!



I'm taking a two week break from eBay and am going to try to clean up this mess!


The moral of the story is....before you decide to embark on an eBay voyage, ask yourself if you can live with the mess that's bound to sneak on board.