Cha-Ching!

Success!

After our previous move to Ashburn, when we had a ton of empty boxes piled up in our garage, I posted an ad on Craigslist offering to sell our moving boxes for $20.

Aside: In case you don't know what Craigslist is... Craigslist is a FREE and very simple website for posting local ads. You can find some pretty good bargains there.

I had five people within an hour respond that they wanted them.

Poof! Boxes gone! Poof! Twenty bucks in my pocket! Cha-Ching! :-)

Given how quick and how many responses I received on that ad, the lesson I took away was that clearly I didn't ask for enough money.

Fast forward four years to our next move to Ashburn.

This time, I added up how much it would cost to buy the boxes from the U-Haul website. It was roughly $150 worth of boxes.

I've been posting an ad to Craigslist every Friday for the past four weeks trying to sell the boxes.

First, I asked for $120. Someone came and bought just the wardrobe boxes for $25. Although I wasn't successful in selling ALL the boxes and clearing out my garage, I still had made more money than I had in selling all the boxes from our previous move.

I subsequently lowered the price to $100, then $80, then $60. After my $60 ad last weekend, I had one lady come with a Volvo and take all the boxes she could fit in her trunk, and she gave me $20. Cha-Ching!

I still had a TON of empty boxes piled up in my garage though.

This Friday, I posted another ad, this time for $50. I had a buyer within an hour of posting the ad. She came and took most of the boxes (all that she could squeeze into her SUV) this morning and handed me a $50 bill. Cha-Ching! Cha-Ching! She came back two more times to fill up her SUV again and took almost all the boxes.

I figure I'll put the handful of remaining boxes out for recycling this week. I'm pretty pleased we got $95 out of it.

I'm even more pleased that I have a CAR parked in the GARAGE now instead of a bunch of cardboard boxes.

Note to Self: $20 was too little, $120 was too much. Next time, try $50.

Long live Craigslist!