One of my obsessions is reducing clutter, and getting rid of stuff that I no longer want or use. Just ask my friends — I’m usually trying to give something away. Right now I’m trying to give away a huge Persian carpet (which no one seems to want). I recently gave my old Mac to my sister, stuffed two bags of old clothes into a donation box, and donated 17 computer books to a AAUW thrift store. I have a Nintendo Wii — got $150 bucks? Actually the Wii is a struggle. I don’t enjoy Wii games, but there’s always that chance that my guests will want to play it. Actually, one thing I’ve learned after many years of life is those “always a chance” moments almost never happen — and when they do — do something else instead.
I also don’t want to have to move the stuff when I move to my next apartment. Lugging huge totes of DVDs and CDs is a bummer. It’s amazing how light a single DVD feels, but put 200 in a box, and you’re going to tear your abdominal wall trying to lift it.
Up until a year ago I bought a fair amount of DVDs — 50% stuff I knew I would like and watch multiple times, and 50% me taking a chance on a film that was supposed to be good. A lot of times the only way to see a foreign movie was to track down and buy the DVD. Now I have a NetFlix account and that has cut my DVD buying from 50 a year, to 5 a year. I have a couple BluRay discs, but the quality change isn’t intriguing enough for me to switch from DVD to BluRay.
So, now I’m looking to sell DVDs to reduce clutter. I went to Amazon to check what prices I could get and I was shocked at how cheap used DVDs are. You can literally get a well known movie from a couple of cents to less than $5.00 (plus shipping, of course), and boxed sets go for like $10. Amazing — it isn’t worth my time to try to sell them. I might as well give them away or ditch them. And, if I’m going to buy a DVD I don’t have — I’m going to buy the used DVD if available. Back in the 1970s, people used to go to places called libraries and borrow things like books and VHS tapes, and no one cared that 200 other people read or watched it first.
So what did I learn:
- DVDs are nearly worthless.
- If you need cash, and only have a DVD collection to sell you’re pretty much screwed.
- If you do want to buy a DVD you can get them really cheap used.
- NetFlix is saving me roughly $800 per year.
- Give your quality, unwanted items to charity or a friend.
- Don’t expect to make money off your collections of things.
