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decluttering

Making money for old phones with CEX

3rd January 2019 by Jax Blunt 2 Comments

Before anyone gets excited, this isn’t a sponsored post. (I’m very open to working with phone brands or recycling /decluttering folks if anyone is offering mind.)

A little while before Christmas I won a new Huawei P20 Pro mobile phone, I may have enthused about it at the time. Which meant that my trusty Samsung S4 was surplus to requirements. Tim had made noises about stashing it as a backup phone, but when I was in CEX with the kids a couple days ago I noticed they were selling phones off that age for a fair bit of money. Sure enough when I checked online, it looked like they might offer me around 50, or more in vouchers and *that* could go towards the camera lens I want for taking gig pictures. (Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 thank you for asking and no, I’ve no idea what that means. Yet.)

I factory reset the phone after checking everything was backed up and retrieving the SD card and trotted down to CEX. The process is fairly straightforward – you do need id if it’s the first time you’ve done it, but I have a membership card from when we streamlined the DVDs a couple of years ago. They give you a preliminary offer and it takes around 40 minutes to test the phone. I used my time wisely with a trip to the library where I paid off my library fines and got them to reset my email address so that I should get reminders and not fines from now on.

Back to CEX and I got a voucher for £69. Would have got slightly more if I’d thought to find the charger and cable too, but as the lens I want is £88 online for the STM version I’m quite happy. Particularly when you think I bought the phone on ebay for £115 vs have had several years use out of it.

So when you get around to upgrading your phone, do think carefully about what you do with the old handset, it could be worth more than you think. Particularly if you’ve looked after it with a decent case and a screen protector too ?

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Filed Under: frugal living, Phones and kit Tagged With: CEX, decluttering, frugality, money making, money saving, recycling, Samsung galaxy s4

Clutter out, cash in – selling on Ebay with the android app.

30th September 2017 by Jax Blunt 1 Comment

Recently I was invited by Mumsnet Bloggers Panel to review the experience of selling on Ebay, which a particular focus on using the app for listing and managing the process. As regular readers will know, I’ve a renewed focus on decluttering the house at the moment, and this seemed like an ideal time to give the whole online selling another shot. I have sold on Ebay before, but it was several years ago so it seemed like a great time to give it all another whirl.

My memories of listing on Ebay were that it was all fiddly and difficult, and I’m very pleased to report that it wasn’t anything like that this time. Basically the app (on android for me) walks you through the whole thing step by step, including things like suggesting pricing and listing, finding the postage service and recommending postage rates and giving you prompts on how you’re doing as you fill the different sections out. I have a vague memory that you used to have to pay for any pictures past the first one (I may be making that up) – now you can have up to 12, and you can snap them on your mobile while doing the listing and do the cropping and rotating as you go. There are of course still fees involved in the process, but it has all been massively streamlined, and if you’re curious as to what it might cost you, there’s a fee calculator here.

To give you some idea of what it all looks like, I took some screenshots as I went.

This is the first screen, with some hints as to what is going to follow

The picture editing (do kind of wish it had a brightening effect, but I guess that would inflate the app somewhat! The advice to approach your pics as if they were selfies is probably a good way to look at it all, except that I don’t really do selfies 😉 )

Once you’ve got pictures in, you get walked through all the other sections – description, pricing, auction length/ style, postage options etc. It’s all very straightforward, and if the app can find similar items, it will come up with suggestions for pricing etc, and then finally you get to preview your listing before you put it live.

I have to say that of my three test items, the only one that didn’t sell, even with an auto relist, was the used item where I took the app’s advice on starting price – I think it was way over inflated. I’m testing again right now with a much lower starting price as my main aim is to get stuff out of the house, and the profit motive is definitely a secondary line. However, with the other two listings I made £7.15 on a couple of little toy/ baby items, and it all ran through very smoothly, with payment received instantly via paypal and smooth communications with the buyers.

Other hints and tips? Always, but *always* get proof of postage. I don’t bother tracking low value items, but the proof of postage is how you get your money back if the item disappears in the post. I use recycled wrapping which keeps the cost down, so I can keep the postage/ packing costs down for buyers as well. (Plus I’m decluttering some of the postage envelopes I’ve got, which is also a win in my mind.)

All in all, now I’ve got back into it, I intend to keep up a regular trickly of Ebay listings over the next few months, and as I add a charity donation to my listing I can feel like I’m doing some good for other people too. Everyone’s a winner 🙂

If I’ve tempted you to give it a whirl, do let me know how you get on, and if you’d like to read a few more bloggers on the topic, take a peek at the linky.

Disclosure: I am a member of the Mumsnet Bloggers Panel, a group of parent bloggers who have volunteered to review products, services, events and brands for Mumsnet. I have not paid for the product or to attend an event. I have editorial control and retain full editorial integrity. I have received a voucher as a token of thanks for this post.

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Filed Under: review Tagged With: charity donation, decluttering, Ebay, mumsnet bloggers

A hundred pieces of me Lucy Dillon Read 52 book 6

1st February 2014 by Jax Blunt 3 Comments

100 pieces of meRead 52, book 6.

A hundred pieces of meiconby Lucy Dillon will be described, no doubt, as chick lit, or women’s fiction. Because it’s about women’s things. Lives, illnesses, love, death. It’s also about men, and relationships, and a dog. It’s about careers, and houses, and work.

It’s glorious, and moving, and heart breaking, and even, amazingly, life changing.

Yes, I actually mean that. Physically, literally, life changing. I read it. And then a day or two later I found myself in the kitchen, hauling all the mugs out of the three cupboards they were spread across, and downsizing our motley collection. I put this squarely down to the effects of reading this book.

Which *is* about decluttering. Sort of. It’s about recognising what is important, and what isn’t, and having a life where you can’t quite turn around in your kitchen for all the things that don’t fit into your cupboards because they’re stuffed with mugs you never use is not quite how I saw my life. So, time to change.

(It’s not just about decluttering things. It’s about decluttering your mind, emotions, memories. But if I go into too much detail, I’ll blow the whole plot.)

Try the blurb.

As heart wrenching and life-affirming as One Day or Me Before You, A Hundred Pieces of Me is a story about what it means to finally live life to the full. Letters from the only man she’s ever loved. A keepsake of the father she never knew. Or just a beautiful glass vase that catches the light, even on a grey day. If you had the chance to make a fresh start, what would you keep from your old life? What would you give away? Gina Bellamy is starting again, after a difficult few years she’d rather forget. But the belongings she’s treasured for so long just don’t seem to fit who she is now. So Gina makes a resolution. She’ll keep just a hundred special items – the rest can go. But that means coming to terms with her past and learning to embrace the future, whatever it might bring

The story is cleverly told. Present life interweaves with object inspired flashbacks as Gina moves on from the end of a relationship, and works her way through the backlog of her life, now stored in (lots of) boxes. There are past climaxes and present ones, if that makes any sense as significant events from her history, still influencing the present are gradually unfolded before us.

It’s emotional, but never mawkish, and the strands come back together to a finely balanced but highly charged ending.

I can see me recommending this book to people left right and centre. And pressing it into people’s hands. Particularly anyone who hoards.

Now, I wonder which wall I can cover with a list?

I’d love to hear what you’ve been reading this week. Feel free to stick it in the linky, and grab the badge if you’d like.

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Filed Under: read52 Tagged With: decluttering, dog, Lucy Dillon, read52, stuff

Popcorn, The Princess Bride, Pizza – a perfect Family Film Night.

19th November 2011 by Jax Blunt 8 Comments

I’ve spent today decluttering in the grand style again. I haven’t actually made it as far as any of the black sacks in the livng room yet, which is rather depressing, but I’ve now gone through two thirds of the cupboard space in our bedroom, sorting it so that there is actually room for storing our clothes, and getting rid of a load of stuff that it just never going to get worn again. And slightly disturbingly, passing rather a lot of my in between children down to Big – seeing her put on a dress that I was wearing a couple of years ago was um, discombobulating I think is the word.

My trip out of the house this afternoon was to take yet another sack down to the charity shop, pick up milk and bits for pizza toppings. I bumped into a couple of sets of ppl I knew, which delayed me rather, meaning that I was multi tasking making popcorn, setting off the pizza dough, sorting the kitchen and organising children to sort enough seating for us all to sit and watch a film.

At least partly because of the recommendation from Michelle, we settled on Princess Bride.

It turned out to be an excellent recommendation. Something for every one – amusing battles and wordplay that kept the adults smiling, bit of romance for Big to enjoy, and something slapstick to keep Small going. Chatting about it on twitter afterwards (where it appeared to be extremely popular with my friends!) Maria called it a kids’ onion film – with a layer peeled away each time you watch. I thought that was a great description, and I certainly think it will stand up to repeated watching.

Home made pizza afterwards, punctuated by many repetitions of the “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die” quote, complete with dodgy accent and over the top actions from Smallest, who thought the whole thing was hilarious. All in all, definitely a successful film night, and we’ve programmed in a few choices for next weekend, though I’m always up for recommendations.

Now it’s late and Smallest desperately needs to be in bed, so if you’ll excuse me I’m off to take her to bed. Good night.

Edited to add a little something from Smallest

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Filed Under: It's where it is Tagged With: Cary Elwes, decluttering, Family film night, ffn, Princess Bride

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