As I seem to keep mentioning, we recently re-arranged our entire house, which has prompted me to weed through a lot of our belongings.

The $20 Challenge really motivates me to sell things rather than just give them away on Freecycle. Freecyle is great, and I still give stuff away there (in fact, right now there's a Titanic Soundtrack cassette on my porch waiting to be picked up by some lucky Freecycler!), but without much more effort I can get $$ for some of the stuff (albeit not Titanic cassettes!). Selling is so easy with free online classifieds like Craig's List and Community e-Bulletin Boards. So far, I've been pretty happy with the results. It feels great to de-clutter and make a little cash at the same time.

In addition to the cat supplies, I also listed 2 hand-me-down lamps that we rarely used (neither gave sufficient light for reading). Someone bought both for $5. Mr. Bean thinks I should have asked more, but I'm happy to have them out of here. I can't imagine they were worth more than $10.

I'll add the $5 to my Challenge:

Old Total: $362.48
+ $5 for lamps
_____________________
New Total: $367.48

I have an eBay auction ending Friday. It won't be a big money maker, but it should net $10-$15 dollars. Wednesday is my first night babysitting for a potentially regular 2 night / week babysitting job.

I babysat tonight for my friend's baby, but I refused to let her pay me. Not only is she my dearest friend in the world, but the baby was only awake for 30 minutes before she went down for the rest of the night. After that, I laid on the couch, read a book and drank their chocolate milk-- hardly a hard night's work!

Let's hope Wednesday's job is as enjoyable!