Clearing the clutter & making some cash

I am an avid second hand shopper. Yard sales & thrift stores are like manna from Heaven to me. 4 years ago, we relocated for a new job, and went from a small house with a garage, to an apartment that was actually larger, but with almost no storage space. When we made the move, we shed about 5 tons of crap. Goodwill made a killing off us.

After a year, the housing market was collapsing around us, and we suddenly realized- we could actually afford a house. A nice house. 10 years married, and 3 kids later, we were going to own our first home.

It was love at first site. Well, it was love at first entrance, anyway. The outside wasn't bad- the inside was perfect for us. 4 bedrooms, a den, a pantry, a laundry room, and a 'back room' (slash junk collecting room). Perfect.

So when we moved into the 4th and last house we even looked at, our 1500 square foot apartment's worth of stuff was lost in this new 2500 square foot house. And, in our town, we had a Goodwill clearance center. Oh, praise the thrift store Heaven's above!

I did what anyone else would do- I shopped. I brought stuff home. I saw dirt cheap prices, and realized I -had- to have it. At some point about a year ago, I started to realize that it had become... well, maybe not an addiction, but a habit. If I saw clothing in the kids sizes, and they were $.29 each, I grabbed it. I over-grabbed it.

So, for a bit now, I've started to really limit A) how often I allow myself to go thrift store shopping, and B) limited just what I spent my money on.

Why? Because our 2500 square foot house now holds 3500 square feet of clutter. It's a huge problem. I plan to declutter a LOT this summer, especially the clothing.

Yesterday, I posted several items on Craigslist, including a Step2 rocking video game chair. We picked it up for $5 at Goodwill when we moved into our apartment- we thought our son would love it. It has been loved and abused by our kids for 4 years now.

It was time to go, and was still in great shape, so I listed it for $10- and 3 hours later, it was sold. It was just picked up. I'm happy to have the money in my pocket, and 1 less item in my house. I almost kind of want my house to look like this again.

Blissfully empty and clutter free.

Super Points

One of the things I do to fill my time, is try to find websites that will give out rewards or payments for my time. My favorite is Gather, which is kind of like a mix between a blog, and a social network like Facebook. For 2008, I earned $1400 there. For 2009, it was down, but I still earned around $850-900. In fact, from January to May of 2009, I saved all my earnings, and took the kids camping up to Mackinaw City for 4 days.

Anyway, I found a new site. I'm not sure yet how great it will turn out to be, but if you like earning sites, check out Superpoints.

So far, I have seen that you earn points when you shop online, as well as from survey's, and playing a clicking game. There is also a search function, but I haven't tried it yet.

Points wise, you get around 500 for signing up, which is worth a $5 Amazon gift card. They do have a minimum cash out of 2500 at first, then it goes down to 1000, then down to just 500 points, based on levels of interaction. It took me all of signing up and filling out my profile to get to the 1000 point cash out level. That means as soon as I hit 1000 points, I can cash out for a $10 gift card.

Check it out if you've got time!

***Edited to add:

Well, thanks to some active referrals, I bumped up to the level where I only needed to have earned 500 points to go ahead and cash out. I cashed in for a $5 Quiznos gift card, since there is one right across the street from where Nick works. I'll let you know when I receive it, so everyone knows how long it takes!