Day 12: Last night after coming home from dinner with the folks, I was yet again annoyed by how my office & garage is a mess. Items are left in piles for eBay or in crumpled old unlabeled bags. The problem I ran into last night as I was about to list more items for eBay, was that I hit my free insertion fee limit. Now they will charge me 30 cents per item this month whether or not I sell something. Oh hells to the no.
Instead of taking photos and listing items right away, I will move towards a cataloging model. Everything I’ve listed will go into a space with similar typed items, ie. all toys go together, clothing, beauty products, and home items. I don’t want to dust things off just to have them accumulate dust again or have my clothes wreak of exhaust fumes once I move them to the garage so I’ve decided I want to invest in some more tupperware. This is the solution to my needs.
Holy Grail
of Tupperwares
This is the SALMA from Ikea 12 gallon tupperware. I already have 2 containers, originally bought to store reycling in my garage, but have since repurposed them for storing items to ebay. My current 2 containers are completely full, and I want some more so that I can move items out of my office into my garage. I decide to think on this tomorrow if it’s a need or want.
In the morning emails today were easy to ignore. Deleted them all and headed in to the office. The day was relatively easy to get through as Mondays are my busy day at work. Was still reflecting on whether or not the cointainers count as a need vs want.
Since Joshua was on chat, I wanted to get his take and thus started The Great Ikea Tupperware Debate of 2014. Our conversation is the following:
Me: Ok the more I think about it the more I want to buy tupperware
Me: So that if I can’t buy clothes at least I can organized my house!
Me: alskjdalkdsjadslk thoughts
Joshua: Well that’s your problem! “The more I think about it”
Joshua: I mean not your problem but PART of the problem.
Joshua: It’s the addiction occupation.
Me: ? I don’t get it.
Joshua: You keep thinking about it and why you need something. In this case to buy something because you believe and know to be true that you NEED it for something else to be better. Whether that is yourself, or something around you. I mean this is more applicable to drugs & alcohol and other types of addictions but I guess in this case, you are addicted to shopping.
Me: But to organize something you need containers. You can’t just make piles like I have right now.
Joshua: Ok you are right on all counts but, you could wait. You could look at what you have and figure out if you have something already OR if you there are things you don’t actually need and can get rid of them.
Me. I could but that defeats the purpose of getting something done.
Me: Well that’s the problem. I won’t get rid of it because I want to sell it what I want to do is photograph everything and put them into bins in the garage and when they sell then I take them out of the bins right now I have piles on the floor in the garage.
Joshua: But then what will u do w/ the bins after?
Me: Well I’m never not going to have junk my parents have 10 more boxes filled with crap that I need to take.
Joshua: I think it’s realistic for you to not have junk in the future.
It our chat continues on, but I’ll stop here. After looking back at this conversation, I think the problem is several things.
- We’re talking past each other.
- We’re focused on two separate ideas. I’m looking to create a process around my eBay ecosystem that will make my living areas more functional and clean. I’m also looking for a long term solution for working around the limited amount of sales I can do per month whereby I still make forward process in terms of prepping things for listings. Joshua is intent on the shopping on non-necessities rule as a principle from his perspective where he doesn’t deem them necesary and that he thinks I’m an addict.
- I did say “want” early on, yes, but are there 1000000 other things I would rather buy that are more fun instead of this? Yes absolutely.
- This might be true in the far future, but not in the near term. “I think it’s realistic for you to not have junk in the future.” I have already moved items into piles for donation vs sale and took the last batch of donation items to Goodwill on Day 5. I absolutely refuse to give away things that I can sell at a premium as “vintage” or items that are new with tags or new in box. I am limited by the 50 items per month and there are over 1000 things I want to sell.
- Personally the biggest benefit of the tupperware is not having to murder a spider on the item I’m selling that was new with tags and then spending an afternoon trying to clean that off before I send an item out. This may or may not *cough* have happened before. I hope none of my buyers read this…
My childhood
in a perfectly
maintained box.
A corner of my office, but the garage looks similar.
What do you think readers? Tupperwares want or need? Opinons welcome either here on the post itself or on any social media medium. I’ll wait till the end of the week for feedback, and based on survey results I will either buy or not buy said the aforementioned tupperwares this weekend.
Tupperware Debate Running Tally (I abstain from voting as I would be biased):
- Want: 6
- Need: 6
Bought: 0
Pinned: o
Sold: 0
Returned: 2
Gifted: 0
