Minimalism

Modern lives are filled with noise, even for minimalists. And every day, it’s getting harder to turn down the volume of our crowded minds.

Even the places in which once held solitude are often now filled with the deluge of our heavily mediated culture. From airport waiting rooms to check out lanes at your local market,  we find ourselves bombarded with ambient advertisements, social pressures, and visually distracting clutter. Or as I call it- digital stress.

And don’t get me wrong, digital stressors often help to keep our business running and our homes entertained, and for bloggers like myself, a steady source of income. But like all good things moderation, digital stress can help to usher in consumption consumerism including our televisions, Internet connections, smartphones, tablets, and our infinite technical advances—the means by which we invest our attention spans every waking moment of every single day. The same stress that leaves us depleted, feel inadequate, and in constant need for irrational change.

But there’s good news: we can turn down the noise. We can halt the digital stress. It’s not easy, and it takes a certain kind of awareness, but we can turn it down.

This is where minimalism comes into play for myself, my home, and my family. Minimalism has taught me to recognize the need in my own life to turn down my stressors, to know when I need to detach from noise, to reconnect with friends and family, and when I need moments of solitude and self-care in my life.

These are the five ways I use minimalism as a tool to help me create solitude and minimize digital stress during chaotic times in my home and in my life:

Reevaluate your mornings. Minimalism has taught me the value of waking up with purpose. I enjoy waking up early. Waking up slowly. Taking my time to enter my new day with clarity and purpose. To take my first stretch from the bed. To limit my digital stress by avoiding marketing and emails for a full two hours after I wake each morning. To do this I set aside twenty minutes each morning for devotion and to write in my gratitude journal in a quiet room with no distractions—no TV, no radio, no clocks, no noise: just me, my thoughts, and my mental clarity. I’m waking up to the world stress-free and on my own terms.

Schedule time to read. I love reading, especially classic literature, political memoirs, and all things Jane Austen. Minimalism teaches me to make time for the things in my life I love especially reading. I now schedule a time to check out books from the library, find free digital books online, or to attend a local book club. This forces me into solitude: just me, my thoughts, and the characters on the page.

Going for a walk. Before I became a minimalist I lead a very sedentary life. I worked in a corporate office. I then transitioned to working from home first as a caretaker, then at-home legal position, and then as a blogger. My life is now very different. I now walk all the time. Walking gives me uninterrupted time to think, time for myself, time inside my head to marshal my emotions and reactions to business dealings, spirituality, and even interpersonal relationships. Walking is the healthiest distraction I’ve ever found and I love the nurturing solitude it provides. Even if it’s a fifteen-minute walk, it’s worth my time: just me, my thoughts, and the street lamps below small town southern skies.

Make time for exercise. Like with walking, I make time to exercise each day. I just walk into my spare bedroom turned home gym and perform everything from yoga stretches to push-ups, squats, and pull-ups. Whatever I do, I enjoy having the opportunity to do it by myself in solitude: just me, my thoughts, and my body in motion. I’ve been able to burn away stress, physical, emotional, and digital, and I’ve lost sixty pounds in the process this past year as well. Exercise has helped to create a new me. Minimalism has helped me recognize it.

Declutter your distractions. When we are distracted by the digital noise we can also become sidetracked from common sense, a state of being that doesn’t seem all too common these days. We forget obligations. We stop taking care of yourself. Luckily, you can try to turn off your cellphone, turn off your television, even take an internet sabbatical. That’s what I’ve done, I turn off social media each weekend and it’s been great: just me, my thoughts, and more meaningful life. When I minimize my distractions, I can truly cynosure onto life’s greatest pleasures- being a joy-chaser extraordinaire.

So these are the 5 ways minimalism helps me to avoid stress at home and can do the same for you. Now, friends, I’d love to know how do you avoid the stresses of life and digital distraction and stress in your neck of the woods? I’d love to hear about it below!

 

Picture a place. A place where each room was filled to capacity with piles of things. Some lovely. Some not. Lots of laundries needing to be folded, magazines were thrown about, piles of papers in abundance, mail collecting by your doorway, and kitchen counters covered with belongings, most of which were from who knows where.

A time when seemingly every square foot of my home was covered in games, toys, papers, books, manuals, legal books, clothing, and all things dusty. I the blink of an eye I moved from a newlywed collecting articles for a new life of wedded bliss towards a home full of chotzskys, clutter, and chaos. I had turned into a full-fledged stuffaholic.

Had there been a 12-step plan for Stuffaholics Anonymous, I would have been the perfect test subject for treatment.  I can see myself standing up and saying, Hello, my name is Nicole, and I’m a Stuffaholic. So, how did I get myself and my family to stop being stuffaholics? Slowly, over time. Specifically, in the past year while in the process of becoming a minimalist I was forced to examine why I was a stuffaholic. This soul-searching didn’t take long as I knew where all of this stemmed from.

My cluttered home and my cluttered emotional state stemmed from my childhood, a fear of the unknown. Growing up I remember my grandmother keeping two toasters in our home, one for use and a spare. She would often tell me that items in a home should be maintained like Noah, in pairs. And through this experience, I slowly over time developed the just-in-case disease. The disease that tells you that you cannot be happy or productive without the things you think you may one day need. This fear of the unknown was at the root of my unnecessary spending from year’s past, was causing me anxiety, and was turning my house into the set from Sanford and Sons.

The realization hit me like a ton of bricks. And when in my own home I saw the evidence of just-in-case’isms at work I was taken back.  We owned toolboxes full of tools, just in case we need to fix something. My kitchen was full of appliances just in case we want to prepare a new, different sort of meal.

We even have closets full of clothes I knew we’ll never wear just in case an occasion should arise. What was worse? Many of these items were hugely valuable assets, costing hundred upon hundreds of dollars that only get used occasionally, such as televisions in spare rooms, gaming systems, formal furniture, appliances, and expensive handbags, jewelry, and shoes. In the grand scheme of things, my home lay as a monument to the incredible waste of natural, economic, and emotional clutter.

Resources that once lost did little more than cause phantom power leaks and collect dust. With time and consideration, I have been able to curb a lot of spending, shopping, and unnecessary accumulations in my home. And so you may be asking, what can be done to cure this need to bring more and more things into our homes? Here are the thirteen tips to help you curb shopaholic tendencies:

Tune out Marketing

Advertising and marketers know us very well.  They are so well-versed in ways to make us want their shiny new stuff. But unlike children are drawn to Saturday morning cartoon commercial propaganda, we now can control both our emotions and purse strings. We can simply say no to spending. Turn off the commercials, unsubscribe from email listings, recycle your weekend advertisements, and put marketers on the back burner.

Utilize the Sharing Economy

Utilize public service first. Before buying books check out your local libraries, before purchasing music check out Youtube or Pandora to listen to the music for free.

Borrow before you buy

Need a tool? Ask a neighbor. Utilize the tools knowledge, and help of friends, family, and neighbors first.

Adopt a potluck lifestyle

You don’t need a house full of dishes, service pieces, platters, and the like. Have only dishes, cups, plates, and utensils you both love and utilize lately. When it’s time to entertain ask others to bring pieces from their homes with them. Being a gracious host sometimes means allowing others to be generous to you as well.

Consider a Capsule Wardrobe

Sometimes pairing down your items capsule wardrobes, wardrobes consisting of under 37 pieces, allows users to laser focus on making the most out of the least amount of clothing options you already have on hand. You can wear your truths right on your sleeve. No credit cards needed!

Conduct a household inventory

Before you shop look in your closet, check your pantry, check your fridge, look in cabinets and cupboards to make sure you’re not buying unnecessary duplicates. If you have enough shoes, dresses, electronics, DVD’s, food items to last you a season, just stop! You don’t need to buy another couple of outfits from Gymboree, a new purse, or another soon-to-be-lost kitchen gadget.

Carry a shopping list

Make a list of what you plan to buy and what you plan to spend on each item before you shop. Buy only from your list. This can greatly help eliminate unnecessary spending in-store.

Put items that you want to buy on hold for one week

Placing unneeded items that you want to buy “on hold” for one week. And at the end of the week, you might find you really didn’t need it after all.

Sales are for suckers

Not every sale is worth shopping. But it’s worth noting that most sales, for nearly everything, are cyclical and will be back around in one seasons time. I tell myself there will be more sales.

Bring cash

Leaving your credit cards at home and using only cash will help you see just what a true financial impact overspending can have on your budget and on the clutter coming into your home.

Track what you spend

Don’t fudge the numbers. Track your spending by writing down everything that you bought this month. Put down the exact price. You need to see where your money is going. You may be shocked at what you see. You may be surprised to see how easy it will be to stop budget leaks too!

Purpose your time

In lieu of spending, use the time you would have been shopping to find ways to pay down credit card debt.  Start by making a list of all of your credit cards, the balance due, minimum payment due and interest rate. Put the card with the highest interest rate at the top. Plan to pay off that balance first. Talk to creditors about lowering the interest rate. You might need to liquidate stuff to pay off debt too!

Minimalism has changed me. What began as just a project to simply own less stuff has changed the way I view myself and the world around me in new and immeasurable ways.

My most significant change? The way I reevaluated how society defines success and how I define my own image of myself as a successful person. Too often, those who make the world go round are said to have the ability to spend the most, use even more resources, pay the least into the safety net, and keep the rest for themselves. This is our society’s archetype of success. 

But this is no longer how I view success. Some of the best people I know would not be regarded as successful in worldly terms—precisely because they have decided to focus their efforts and resources on fewer material things.

These people are far too rare—or at least, they do not get enough of the recognition I believe they deserve.

Instead, it seems ingrained in us all the desire to gain the admiration of others. Because of that, many people will compromise their greater moral compass to justify gaining access to the facade of temporal, worldly success.

I think it is important for us to no longer take the bait—to no longer lavish accolades and social construct on those who flaunt selfish temporary pursuits.

To that end, because of how my view of the world and its people has begun to change, I will offer a short list of 7 things that no longer impress me and that I have stopped buying into this last year:

The brand name of my clothing. Manufacturing practices are important. So is quality, fit, and a company’s stance on ethics and worker’s rights. So why the name printed on the outside of the shirt should matter, I will never understand. Too often, people will go out of their way to pay a premium just for the privilege of becoming a walking billboard for companies who in turn do not support their gender, family structure, moral compass, lifestyle choices, or who publicly promote size bias. All of which is beyond me. I am no longer impressed by the logo on your shirt, your handbag, your makeup palette, your tennis shoes, or the face of your watch. Instead, I am choosing to admire those who are confident in timeless fashion and seek to make an impression based on their character and their countenance. 

The number of karats in others jewelry. One of the most important lessons I learned while missioning in Africa is that sometimes all that glitters is not gold. Far too many of the world’s diamonds are mined using practices that exploit workers, children, and communities. Worse still, many miners are dying in undocumented accidents, child labor is widespread, and corrupt leaders are depriving diamond mining communities of funds badly needed for basic living conditions such as running water, sanitation, and vaccinations. It’s also worth noting that small-scale mining, which produces about 15% of the world’s diamonds, often pay workers under $1.00 a day in wages for products that sell at market numbers in excess of hundreds of thousands of dollars. So for me, there is no excuse to buy such products. Not for weddings, not for push presents, not just because you vlog. So unless you are a geologist or a curator at the British Antiquities museum, the size of the rock on someone’s finger, is useless, tacky information. 

The price of your car. The goal of any vehicle is to safely transport persons from Point A to Point B. Reliability is important, as is the comfort and convenience they provide. But most luxury cars do not sell reliability or the family of proud workers who design, assemble, and manufacture those automobiles, but instead seek to appeal to a different motivation, that of classism and elitism. Appealing marketing that speaks to our inner needs to broadcast success and wealth. Our need to get noticed—if only by strangers for 60 seconds at a red light while becoming heavily indebted to lending companies as a result. To this I say: The sexiest car you can own is the one that has long since been paid for. 

The square footage of others’ homes. Houses provide shelter and opportunity for stability. They represent an investment in both our finances and our neighborhoods as a whole. I have personally experienced the pride that comes from providing and creating a home for my family. But several years ago, my husband and I intentionally chose to downsize our lifestyle, move to a smaller 2,500 square foot home. We did so to pay less annual millage and to have fewer home repairs and upkeep. We also plan to purchase an even smaller home in the years to come. And to this day, when I drive past our family’s former much large house, the only thing I can think of is how much happier we are in a small one. So for me, new construction and newly flipped homes just don’t impress me much. 

The dollars in everyone else’s bank account. The ultimate measure of success in our world today is personal wealth. Incidentally, we are not the first—this standard holds true from the beginning of time. But I’m starting to wonder if we have been using the wrong measure. Maybe the number of dollars in a bank account is not the greatest measurement of success. Maybe instead, the amount of good we are able to accomplish with our lives is a truer measure of success. So while I appreciate you letting me know how much you can earn per year or berating me for not being on your level, in terms of economic progress, instead I’d love to know how many others you helped lift up along your journey, what your academic accomplishments are, and how much free time you have to enjoy the fruits of your labors with friends and family. I want to hear your ideas on hope, joy, and personal sustainability, and how those ideas shaped your plan for lasting economic wealth. As the adage goes, a man will die but not his ideas. 

The model of someone’s cell phone. Just the other day, I was spending time standing in the checkout lane of a grocery store. One of the most repeated conversations I overheard was others constant comparison of technology. “Which iPhone do you have? or What iWatch is that? And guess who just got a new iPad for her birthday?” It was alarming to hear children under the age of 10 being seduced into comparison and commercialism when it came to battery-powered electronics. And as much as I wanted to blame and correct them, I was reminded that we adults are no that different. If we are not comparing cell phones, we are often lusting after faster computers, gaming systems, or television screens. Even as women, I cannot tell you how many Facebook groups are devoted to the debate over Pressure Cooker XL vs. Instapot, the Bluetooth edition! This year I want to focus on electronics that help my business, my blogging, and to help keep my family safe. No more, no less. 

The age of others retirement. Retirement is the ultimate goal for most. Unfortunately, this creates an attitude that sees the greatest goal of work is to remove ourselves from it. I think that approach is short-sighted and fails to recognize the fulfillment that can be found not in work, but in a meaningful, lasting career. Even more than this, how often is the age of someone’s retirement is based on factors outside of anyone’s control—The rise and fall of the stock market, tenure, employment packages, and contract. And this doesn’t even begin to count those who will continue working late in life because they have graciously used their financial resources to bless others through volunteerism, mentorship, and work in the non-profit sector. While my husband and I both have a designated retirement age set, I will no longer be using the high life of the centenarian elite as a gauge to view the end of my own days of employment and occupation. 

The photos on others social media account. Almost everyone posts flattering images and experiences of themselves online—from new clothes and restaurant dishes to local concerts and blogger swag. These images are closely guarded and selected routinely airbrushed, cropped, flipped, edited, and scheduled. Images that portray only the most exciting parts of our lives. With foolish abandon, we blame Photoshop and Pinterest for perpetuating those unattainable images of perfection while simultaneously editing and photoshopping our own lives for social media to emulate the same. While as a blogger I see the necessity of many of these photos, in terms of netting a larger social media following and increasing our stance as online entrepreneurs and media influencers, yet somehow it still feels hollow and undeserved. This year I’m making a personal commitment to love images for what they truly are, beautiful, engaging, income generating captions of moments long since gone by. I’m vowing to be less envious and a little less salty too, when it comes to viewing the photos on the social media accounts of others. 

So, friends, those are the 7 things that I stopped buying into in 2017. Let’s stop trying to impress others with the things that we own. Let’s hold each other accountable in finding purpose and pleasure in ourselves. And to start inspiring others with the lives that we live, as we are each and every unperfected, unairbrushed day. If there is something you would love to stop buying into this year, be sure to let me know below! 

When it comes to cleaning, there always seems to be a bit of a hassle involved. Cleaning out a shed is no exception. For when a shed is really messy, it can not only be difficult to decide the best way to organize your space, but may over time, infringe on your ability to complete projects, quickly attend to household emergency repairs, put up holiday decor, or to seasonally garden and landscape your home’s outdoor property. 

Even as a minimalist, my home’s shed was one of the hardest spaces in my home to organize. You see, by nature, I’m a saver, and my shed is where I logically thought to store all of the items I envisioned needing to keep our home in good repair. I felt that every extra hose, cable, bolt, nut, and screw, while not being used presently, would be used in the near future. In the attempt to be become a good steward of my home, I abused the purpose of my shed, a building intended to store only what my home needed at present, into an out of sight, out of mind wasteland for holiday decor, gardening gadgets, and building materials far past their prime. 

Though there were many times I walked into the shed and put it into my good intentions memory bank to clean and organize this space, rarely did this manifest into action. While I could easily blame time, circumstance, and familiar obligations for my lack of shed cleanliness, the truth remains: I did not clean out my shed because I was okay with allowing this area of my home to become a catchall for items and projects that no longer reflected my family’s lifestyle or added value to my life. That I didn’t want to be confronted by all of the items I had accumulated over the past six years, in hopes of impressing others or to emulate the talents and aspirations of others successes on Pinterest I had once admired.

But the issues of my shed grew much deeper than simply a messy shed. I knew that my examining my shed, I would have to examine myself as well. That I didn’t want to delve deeper into understanding why I would spend thousands of dollars on countless gadgets and cords each year when my shed was already overrun with a myriad of these same unused items already.  I didn’t want to reflect on the fact that for every misstep in my life, business, and marriage, I bought new, unused holiday decor to mask my unhappiness in other areas of my life. Why would have known that such a small space could contain so much, figuratively or otherwise? This past weekend I finally dug deep and spent two days peeling back the layers of my shed’s overgrowth, in more ways than one. 

So, here are a few things I learned while cleaning out my shed, as a minimalist:

Start with a resolution of change: When I made this seasonal resolution earlier last week to clean out my shed, it was initially processed as a way to expand my minimalism post on my blog. Another check on the old editorial calendar, if you will. But the closer the day came to actually cleaning out my shed, the more excuses as to not completing this task began to creep up. I had to make a resolution to not simply organize my space this year, in hopes of just making it through another holiday season, but to create long-lasting progress for everyone in my family. This wasn’t simply a Halloween through Christmas decluttering project, this needed to be a dedicated block of time for reducing the items we owned as a family, just like the de-owning we completed on the inside rooms of our home. 

Create boundaries: I married my best friend. A man who takes pleasure in providing not just my needs, but my overall wants as well. And it is because of his desire to be a giver, that my husband has never liked to say no to any requests I made for holiday decor, gardening tools, and even for power tools I suggested he buy not only for his own projects but for my collective inspiration du jour. Your’s truly, on the other hand, was never willing to put a spending or spatial limit on my whimsical wants lists and often went to the store with the knowledge that no matter what new fangled item I could amass, my shed could accommodate it’s long-term storage needs.

So for this reason in year’s past, my husband and I would purchase new storage bins to accommodate all of my growing collections of holiday decor each and every Black Friday. The downside? Not only was this a passive-aggressive was for me to spend frivolously and emotionally manipulate my husband into buying me expensive craft store finds while I professed the need to daily live on a budget, but our shed contained dozens of tubs of plastic, overpriced holiday decor, of which most never saw the light of day. This was simply wasteful consumption, and we were not happier by any means as a result. 

So, this past weekend my husband and I went through our holiday decor. I made a lot of due apologies to my husband, and my husband vowed to financially keep me more accountable for my holiday decor accumulation and spending. We each then made a pact to keep only the items that truly sparked joy, could not be replaced, and helped us celebrate the holidays each year. We also made a rule to only decorate for Harvest and Holiday moving forward. No longer would decorate for Halloween, Easter, Valentine’s Day, Saint Patrick’s day, Mardi Gras, Cinco de Mayo, Spring, Thanksgiving, and the like. Decor would be limited the holidays that brought us the most joy as a family. Decor would be limited to the places that its presence would bring us the most enjoyment, on our mantle, entry area, and front porch. 

Another new change?  No longer would we place holiday lights along the length of our roof this December, in hopes of mimicking our neighbors, or to be featured in our local newspaper. Instead, our lights will reflect a more simple, more dignified porch-scape. This change will help us to lower our power consumption, be more tailored to our tastes, and would not express the desires of our neighbors and passersby, but what we as a family wanted to see during this and future holiday seasons. This small change will help us to be able to take minutes rather than hours to put up, take down, and store holiday decor this coming season. 

My husband and I also made a pact to keep all of these items confined to four large, sustainable bamboo wooden trunks, and to not purchase any new holiday decor, even if it is on sale after the holidays, for three years. We hope that this time will help us truly dig deeper and see with each passing season what items we treasure and what items we can donate to others. We created holiday spending and accumulation boundaries. We believe that this boundary will help us economically, emotionally, and environmentally more conscious as well. 

Understanding that organizing my shed only caused more clutter: Normally when doing a massive cleaning of a shed, the first thing you would typically do is to find all the things you can throw away, and then reorganizing the remaining items. The idea that future cleaning and organizing endeavors will go more smoothly if you’ve gotten rid of a few things you don’t need today. This past weekend we decided to take clearing out our shed t the next level. 

In hopes of creating a more minimal and cathartic shed space, we removed every item from our shed. Each item was placed in out carport, and all organizational items, bins, totes, and baskets were removed and immediately taken to donation. Without the crutch of plastic totes to help us organize our belongings, we could no longer shuffle items, or organize them. e painstakingly went through each and every item, and within a few hours over half was taken away to donations as well. All remaining items were placed on hooks on the walls, placed in the four wooden trunks, separated by holiday, or openly stored for immediate use. Items that needed repair were repaired and made ready for use as well. It was so freeing to no longer see walls upon walls of plastic storage bins. I also gained another bit of perspective, organizing, especially with

As we painstakingly went through each and every item, we began to see how by removing the access we could clearly start to see all of the better more lasting investments we had purchased for our home. We were more prepared for home ownership than we had previously thought. At this point, all remaining items were placed on hooks on the walls, placed in the four wooden trunks, separated by holiday, or openly stored for immediate use. Items that needed repair were repaired and made ready for use as well. It was so freeing to no longer see walls upon walls of plastic storage bins. I also gained another bit of perspective, organizing, especially with plastic totes and bins, is simply a fancier term for hoarding. 

Safety should be maintained: When we started sorting through our shed we started to notice how many chemicals we owned as a family. From spray paints to varnishes, our shed has slowly over time turned into a nuclear power station. So one of the first things we did was figure out what chemicals we no longer needed, pulled them to the side, boxed them up, and went online to see what agencies would help us properly dispose of these unneeded and dangerous agents in our shed. Everything from expired cleaners, old paint, and dried up liquid items were removed. Cleaning out our shed made our home a lot safer for this coming season and on. 

Recycle first: In many homes, sheds are where recyclables that may have piled up. From newspapers kept for painting projects and fire pit starters, to plastic bins and jugs, all of these items should be recycled when no longer in usage. 

Make everything within reach: One of our big projects this past weekend was to make everything within our shed accessible for immediate use. So once everything that needed to be discarded was removed, we started to place items we knew we needed to keep back into our shed in an orderly manner. We placed items we needed for this coming season on lower shelves, and items from the next gardening season on higher shelves. We made sure to only use shelves my husband could reach without having to access a ladder. Accessibility also meant ease of use, so these same shelves new mason jars for housing bird seed, grass seed, and plant food. And when it came time to place our tools back in our shed, we placed small, galvanized metal hooks all along a single wall and hung each tool. Hidden tools are unused tools. We sought to create more usefulness in our shed. Each tool in our shed is now used or is a necessity item in our home shed. Should we need a specialty tool for a future project, we will borrow or rent tools instead. 

So, in just nine and a half short hours later, our shed was transformed from an emotional and economic deluge into a minimal, useful space. I can only imagine how much nicer the holiday season will feel when we will no longer face tripping over anything in the shed. But what I know to be true right now is that cleaning our my shed helped me grow as a person and be a more responsible steward to our home, a better wife, a strong person, and a more savvy saver in the process.

But with all of this said, what does this mean for you? With the gardening season soon at an end and the holiday season being just around the corner, this is a great time to not only clean out your shed before the chaos of the holiday’s but to help bless other families with as well. And the best part? By minimizing your shed’s possessions, come next spring, you won’t have any excuses to get your gardening and Spring cleaning started early. You’ll be more than ready. You can create a more prepared home today, cost-free. 

So, savvy savers? Do you have any plans for decluttering projects this coming season? I’d love to hear about it below.

Here’s to more minimal sheds,

As a minimalist, keeping clutter and chaos at bay is a daily challenge. In terms of keeping up with my zero-waste, less-is-more attitude, I often gather any excessive belongings from my home and sell them online, via Facebook local groups. So, why Facebook? With Facebook local groups super simple to sell your unwanted stuff on Facebook local Buy, Sell, or Trade groups easily and without out any initial out-of-pocket. 

A few great benefits to selling locally on Facebook:

• On Facebook, you set your price and there’s no one taking a cut of your sale price or charging you to host your listing.
  You can set your own preferred method of payment.
  You also have the opportunity to become part of a community where people are looking for bargains as much as others are looking to declutter their homes.

So, if you decide to start selling, here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Search for your state or region and the word “sell” or “buy” to find local buy/sell/trade groups.
2. If there are none, you can always start one and get the word out in your community!
3. You may find that many of the groups are closed, so you’ll have to ask permission to join, and others only accept certain types of listings.
4. Many have strict listing requirements and limits on how many items you can try to sell per day in order to stave off spammers and scam artists.
5. Be sure to check out each group/administration rules prior to joining.
6. Once you are a local group member, list your own items for sale, and set your own prices.

Once you have items listed for sale, here are some pointers to keep in mind when negotiating locally:

• Be sure to note whether you’re willing to ship something, or—in the case of furniture or large electronics or appliances—whether you’d rather the buyer come pick it up.
• Be specific in your pricing and listings; do not use vague terminology, such as “make me an offer.”
• Be prompt in answering questions, commenting on posts, as well as taking down notices for sold items.
• Always check your “other” folder in Facebook messenger; those whom you are not friends with, will have messages posted to this folder, so be sure to check it often to not miss out on any awesome offers of sale!
• Every 24 hours you can “bump” a listing, an action which will automatically move a listing to the top of the groups wall by typing “bump” in the comment section under your listing; this can be done once per item, per group, per 24-hour period.
• Be courteous. Allow users to ask questions, and then try and sell to the first inquiry before continuing down your list.
  Don’t be afraid of offers or hagglers. Know your items worth, not it’s sentimental value. In order to make a sale, you must be willing to negotiate on price; this doesn’t mean accepting insulting, low-ball offers, but reasonable offers.
• When scheduling a pick-up time, schedule your drop offs in a well lit, public place, and bring a friend or family member with you. Also, if selling multiple items, have your buyers come in 15 minute increments to avoid wasting gas and time waiting on buyers who may be no-shows!
• Have fun! This goes without saying you should have fun, even when selling goods!

So today, I challenge you to start selling your items on Facebook using these steps:

• Set a small goal, say $100.00 in value, or ten items to sell.
• Find a local Facebook Group.
• Join your group.
• Prep your items for sale; make sure items are clean, ready for pick-up, sorted, and photographed.
• Be patient! Sales take time.

So folks, have you had much luck in selling locally on Facebook groups in your area? I’d love to hear about your tips, tricks, and experience below!

Here’s to saving,