In-aug-uration Rentals

I'm having flashbacks to Monterey. During the U.S. Open, lots of people around Monterey rented out their homes to people coming to town for the golf tournament. It seemed like a good idea to me then - get out of town away from the crowds and let someone else pay for your vacation.

Now, with In-aug-ur-ation Day rapidly approaching, there are a lot of ads on Craigslist for people around the DC area offering to rent out their homes for the festivities. (Hyphens intentionally inserted to prevent people from coming to my blog looking for information about the event.)

I guess I could understand people IN DC renting out their places to be close enough to the event to walk. I just don't understand why so many listings are way out here in places like Sterling and Ashburn. I have heard predictions that traffic will be horrendous and bodies will be crammed into metro cars like sardines and we should all just stay home if we aren't going to the big event.

So why would someone pay to rent a place so far out and then face the additional ordeal of the transportation into the city?

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!