Decluttering and dinner

On Saturday we tackled the pile in the corner of our dining room. Several items that didn't have a place to go got stacked there "temporarily." Two boxes, the tool box, and a small suitcase. The kitties enjoyed using this stack of stuff as a jungle gym, as iMac is demonstrating in the photo below. But I did not enjoy looking at it so it was time for it to go!


The boxes had been there long enough that we couldn't even remember what was in the big gray tub. We started off with the cardboard box of VHS tapes. We don't even have a working VCR any more. So, it was time to get rid of most of them. Here are our stacks after we sorted them.


Pile 1: Movie my husband borrowed from friends years ago. He's going to call them and see if they even want it back.

Pile 2: Movies we have on DVD too, will buy on DVD, or don't want anymore.

Pile 3: Trash! These are tapes from back in the day when we recorded shows off of TV to watch later. It seems like forever ago, but it was as recent as three years ago. Now we love our DVR!

Pile 4: The keep pile. These are home movies or other sentimental videos.

So, we went from 40 VHS tapes to only 10! They fit on some shelves in our guest bedroom for now. They will probably move again once we tackle that room.

Next, we opened up the tub. It was full of books that we already for planning on selling to Half Price Books. I guess they never made it there!

The toolbox and suitcase will hopefully fit in a closet or the storage unit once we clean them out. They were temporarily (I mean it this time!) relocated to the guest bedroom.

We decided to make a trip to Half Price Books right away to get the books, VHS tapes, and DVD from our sort last week out of the house. We made a total of $16.60! It was enough to pay for our dinner at Chipotle with some change left over!


So we cleared out the corner of our dining room and made money! This might be my favorite project so far!

Time spent: 1 hour and 5 minutes (45 min. clearing out the corner, 20 minutes driving to and from Half Price Books)
Total cost: -$16.60! This was a money maker.

Do you have old books and movies lying around? I highly recommend showing them the door. You might even make some extra cash in the process.