Sick, and Some Final Comments on Yard Sales

I suppose it was only a matter of time. After a full work week, long hours of line edits, a yard sale, two drives to Bangor and back, and muggy weather for the past while, my body finally decided I needed to be sick. Feels like my head is in a vice today, but I won’t go into all the fun details. I’m in bed, and I’m hoping that I get feeling better by tomorrow.

However, I did want to give one last parting observation on yard sales. Yes, we ended up selling the sofa and the oven, although it was touch and go there for a while. In the end, we took in about $200 at the yard sale, and then we boxed everything else up and took it straight to good will. I’d heard you should ask for a receipt when you donate things, so that you can take it as a tax deduction come April, so I did. They gave me a simple form to fill out, with three blanks: one for my name, one for how many boxes I donated, and one for the estimated total value of the donation. They also included a handy sheet for figuring out the estimated value.

I got home and got to figuring out just what my donation was worth and how much that would then save me on my taxes. End result? I’ll save $67.50 (I think–I’m not exactly a tax professional). So let me get this straight . . . For the yard sale, Denisa and I spent probably around 20 hours–at least. We made $200, for a grand total of $10/hour. For the charitable donation, we spent about a half hour driving the stuff there and dropping it off, and made $67.50, for a grand total of  $135/hour.

I wasn’t a math major, but I think it’s pretty clear which was a better use of my time.

It should be noted that our thrift store doesn’t take computers, furniture and certain other items, so I wouldn’t have been able to donate those. Still, I could try Craigslist or just asking around on Facebook to see if anyone’s interested in those sort of things.

Plus, if I can just donate items as I go, a few boxes at a time, I’ll never have the huge backlog of boxes to store and worry about. So my mind’s made up: I’ll likely not be doing another yard sale any time soon. I could probably make a bit more money doing a yard sale than I could just donating items, but the sheer amount of time and effort I have to invest in that yard sale dwarfs the ease of charitable donations. (This might change once I look at my taxes next year.)

How about you? Any of you tried both? Any words of wisdom? Do share. I’ll be going back to sleep now . . .