Earn Extra Cash By Selling Items Around Your Home!

Join us for Day #13 of the 20 Day Budget Challenge!

Today let’s talk about all of the cash that is collecting dust in your house.

During this budget challenge, I already mentioned selling items around your house as a great way to get a jump start on building your emergency fund.  Today I want to give you more tips on how to be successful in doing this.

I started my business Ebay store a few months ago now, and I’ve found so many things around our house that I was willing to part with.  For example:

• An old precious moments figurine for $40.
• An ab workout exercise thing that you could play games while doing planks.  I never used it – especially with long covid/POTS.  So I sold that for $45. 
• My daughter had a rare pattern of Vans that she grew out of and got $20 for those on Ebay. 
• I had an old sandwich press made by Pampered Chef that I just sold for $15.
• At Christmas time, Kohl’s had an awesome deal on small home appliances where you could get a rebate and each appliance cost around $3.  I purchased 3 waffle makers, and have sold 2 out of the 3 so far on Ebay, making me $30.
• I used to sell Colorstreet nail stickers, and decided to part with my stock for $50.

That’s just 6 items I sold from around the house and I made $200!! 

I remember reading a statistic that the average home in America probably has $3000 worth of items in their home that they could part with and sell.  

A couple of years ago, I actually made over $700 from a Garbage Pail Kid poster that I got as a 6-year-old kid.  We went to the same gas station week after week and my mom let me buy these gross cards. The gas station owner knew how much of a fan I was of these cards (which I would NEVER let my kids buy now!) and he gave me a poster that came in one of the boxes of the 1st series of cards.  He told me to hang onto that b/c someday it would be worth a lot of money.  He was right!  What a fun surprise that was when it sold!

You might be wondering how I keep a constant supply of items to sell on Ebay, other than things I just find around my house.  I go to thrift stores and Goodwills, and wholesale dealers to find more items to sell.  One of my favorite Goodwill finds was the soundtrack to The Twilight Zone which I paid $2 for.  Within a week, it sold for over $100 on Ebay!  

If you don’t want to deal with the hassle of boxing and shipping items, use Facebook Marketplace and sell locally.  That way you can also sell bigger items that you would never want to ship.  We currently have a set of winter tires that were hardly used for sale right now on FB Marketplace.  (Come on perfect buyer – and buy off-season!!  🙂  )

If this process seems too overwhelming to do, then break it down into a smaller task.  Start out by picking out 10 items, and list 2 a week for the next 5 weeks.  See how much money you make next month and put it toward debt, or even have an extra date night out.  🙂  

If it goes well, or if you find more than 10 items, then do the same thing for the next 5 weeks.  You’d be surprised by how much this adds up and how much you can make extra in a year by doing this!

If you want to have a yard sale, that’s great.  It’s an easy and fast way to make some money in one day.  BUT…..you won’t make half as much as if you just had a set pile of items and slowly, over time, listed them on Ebay.  You may be surprised by how much an item is actually worth when you price compare. It’s a bit more time-consuming, but overall less work than a big weekend yard sale.  Plus you can work on it slowly over time, and make double or triple what you would make if you just had a yard sale.

If you try this and make some money, please come back and leave a comment telling us what you sold and how much you earned!

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