Many times when working with organizing clients we will hit an issue that goes like this:
“But, I paid a lot of money for that and it IS top of the line” Top of the line more than 3 years ago in electronics means it has little or no resale value left and needs to be recycled if you are going to let it go. I often do a search and show people on my phone that the item has no value and it just needs to go. Most often their emotions win and they keep the item, we store it somewhere, and it doesn’t get used. Or they spend hours of their time trying to sell the item to dealers or online. The XM radio speakers, in the photo, from the early 2000’s have no value.
Here is my personal example from this last month.
We had a 4 year old HP printer. I wanted to recycle it, my husband knew what he spent for it and thought we should get a little money for it. It worked great when we last used it, which was over a year ago. So I asked a friend who sells things on amazon to list it for me at the low price for used printers, which was $149. Within a week we had it sold and shipped. Yesterday we got an email that it didn’t work, the inks were off in color and the black totally didn’t work. For fear that I would harm my friends amazon rating I asked the buyer to just send the defective printer back to us and we would refund the product cost and the shipping and we would pay to have it shipped back.
So this printer has now cost us:
$12 in extra shipping cost to the buyer
$35 to have it shipped back
$30 in amazon selling fees
$15 for my friends time.
for a total of at least $92.00. We could have recycled it for $25.
There is a time to just let go. It can be very emotional when we think about how much we paid for something when it was new and now it is not worth anything. But, that emotion should not be the decision maker of the situation. Facts and reality should be. Sometimes the truth hurts. I have found that it may sting a little, but it feels better than having more time and money consumed to avoid a feeling. With electronic items especially, there is a short shelf life. They depreciate quickly. You should focus on getting your money’s worth of use out of the product rather than it’s resale value.
Next time you are on the fence about keeping or letting go of something, take a deep breath and ask yourself, “DO I love it and use it? What is this really worth on the market right now? What is my time worth to try and get that? What happens if I just let it go and move on?”