Photo Tag

Dulwich Divorcee has very kindly tagged me. The instruction is to go into my photo collection, take the fourth folder and the fourth picture in that folder and explain it. Then tag four more bloggers to do the same.

It so happens my fourth photo folder is a collection of items I have sold on ebay and the fourth photo is this........


I only started selling stuff on ebay about two years ago. Until then I had barely heard of ebay and had certainly never gone into that website. The reason I started came about quite by chance. A friend had dropped her much prized china teapot on the floor and it had shattered into a thousand pieces. She had immense difficulty finding a replacement of that particular pottery/pattern and, as she did not have access to a computer, she asked if I could look on ebay for her. As I say, up until that point I had never ever looked at ebay, let alone bought anything, but not only was I able to track down the very teapot she was searching, I managed to outbid some very fierce competition and get the teapot for her. She was so grateful she asked me to repeat the whole exercise all over again to get a spare teapot, just in case she ever wanted to bounce that one on the floor too. Within weeks she was the proud owner of two identical teapots, courtesy of my forays into ebay.

After that, I got bitten by the bug. I quite liked lurking in the background until the auction was due to end and then I would pounce out of the blue and place a bid before any other interested parties could retaliate. I bought quite a few things on ebay after that and found some unusual and very apt Christmas presents that way too. Shortly after that I decided to put a few things on for sale myself to test the water. I found that things sold quite easily and that I was able to de-clutter the house and make a bit of profit in the bargain. It also coincided with the time when Kay decided to go on her Latin-America trip. The conditions of her trip, laid down by the organisers, were that she needed to save up money for the trip herself, where at all possible. To that end Kay took a part-time supermarket job for a few months, but it was obvious she was not going to be able to save it all herself without her school work suffering. So I offered to help by selling off a lot of her things - clothes that were too small or toys she had outgrown. It helped to empty over-full cupboards and drawers, while at the same time making the necessary funds required.

The fourth photo of the fourth album above is one of those items. A book Kay had when she was a toddler. A dictionary with lift-the-flap pictures with the words underneath. Now Kay was studying for A-levels, it was hardly going to be of any use to her any more. It sold for £2.25 plus postage. Not probably a vast amount of money in itself, but I figured if I sold every surplus book, toy or piece of clothing for that price rather than throw it out or give it away, I could make a real difference. In fact, in the space of about a year, I was able to give Kay about £600 towards her airfare, just from ebay sales alone. And our house was benefiting from the ebay sales too by beginning to look less like a jumble sale in a tornado!

Since Kay's trip, I have not stopped selling on ebay. I am still gradually de-cluttering the whole house. Every now and again, I will go through a room or a cupboard and think "Do I really need all this?" and try to be ruthless. Half will get put back in the cupboard or drawer, the other half destined for ebay. I spend an afternoon writing up the ads and getting the pictures done. It is making me quite entrepreneurial. And the house is getting tidier!

So thanks DD for giving me the chance to post about this. I am now at random passing on the tag to the following (who have not been tasked with this tag before, I hope):

1. Fern's Lakeland Blog (she always has such lovely pictures on her blog anyway)
2. Kit Courtney
3. Dreaming of a Size 12
4. Don't Panic