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Turn Clutter Into Cash:

How one housewife was able to finance her own hip replacement surgery by peddling her husband's baseball card collection while he watched the World Series on TV.

By Mike Boone

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How often have you said, "If only I could get my hands on an extra forty thousand I could leave the bum I'm married to, fly to the tropics, meet some young cabana boy and turn him into a shell of his former self?"

With a keen eye for a bargain and a closet full of your husband's good suits you could already be well on your way to the airport doing just that. When you stop to realize a vintage pool table in reasonable condition can sell for upwards of fifty dollars it is downright criminal for you not to take advantage of the equity that's been building up in the useless objects your husband has been scrupulously accumulating over the decades.

Start by placing an ad on the bulletin board in your local supermarket explaining how your husband is dead and you have to get rid of his stuff before the in-laws come nosing around for mementos and keepsakes to take to the D.A.'s office. Try to avoid the word "junk" as this suggests a negative connotation. Many women actually wait until their spouse actually dies before this idea even occurs to them. In the meantime they are stuck, not only with their husbands but with his annoying CD collection which has been blocking the hallway for the past ten years, when they could be holding onto a roll of crisp twenties and have a clear pathway to the bathroom.

Why not simply post it on EBay? Maryann Gothburg of Winningtom, North Carolina learned why not the hard way when her husband bought back all his own junk. I know I suggested earlier not using the word "junk" but in this case it really was a load of crap. Why anyone would clutter up their attic with a lot of ancient, dusty, signed football jerseys from the 1920's is anyone's guess.

The big ticket items aren't always what you imagine. Sure his heart/lung machine will fetch a healthy asking price but you'd be surprised at how seeming useless trash can also be turned into ready cash. Your husband's Nordic Mountain bike could bring in a tidy bundle on its own but when you factor in the various add-ons he bought to go with it the value multiplies at a surprising rate. The racing helmet with fuzz guard chin strap, the water bottle, the wheels, the seat. Now the package can bring in a whopping sixty to eighty bills.

You know that sofa he's sleeping on right now? Seventy-five bucks, easy. His lawn mower - another sixty-five. The shed it's stored in - tack on an additional eighty to ninety dollars. This is no exaggeration, girls, it's happening all around you.

That stupid Les Paul custom edition nine string guitar he's always bragging about to his layabout drinking buddies may not be worth anything to you but someone out there will hand over a ten dollar bill for it. Eurnice Bagavance in Toronto sold her husband Charlie's binoculars for an amazing three dollars. He always claimed they cost him four hundred, seven years ago. Imagine paying four hundred dollars for something you could get in a garage sale for three dollars? It's scandalous the way some husbands mismanage household funds. You owe it to the family to convert this untapped equity into something of genuine value - like this year's line of L'Oreal European twin heel pumps.

Charlie caught on real quick and sold Eurnice's antique tea set for sixteen dollars and eleven cents. In less than two days had amassed an amazing one hundred and thirty-three dollars they never realized they had. And it didn't stop there. After the dining room set, they were already tagging kitchen appliances and Charlie's new pick-up truck. In one short week they had managed to clean out everything they owned for an astounding six hundred and forty dollars in ready cash. And here's the kicker, Eurnice got the whole bundle in the divorce. Can you imagine the possibilities?

Come on and join the revolution, discover your path to financial independence. In the time it took to read this article you could have sold the old man's computer and already be twenty-five dollars on the road to a debt free future. Now you've got the idea. Good luck and happy selling. This is one time you can have it all and still manage to keep absolutely nothing - all at the same time.

OTHER HW ARTICLES BY MIKE BOONE

• Get in Shape with Ballroom Dancing
• Shape Up with Baseball!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike Boone graduated from the Visual Language Interpreter Training program and published an article, Interpreting: The Development of the Profession, in an alternative communication magazine. He realized that writing was his own preferred form of communication. He went on to have humor pieces published in the likes of Rampike magazine and the Knucklehead Press. You can locate his screenplay parody in the March 1, 2004 issue of the online Ezine, Fools Motley. In 1998 he won first prize in the comedy category of the American Songwriting Competition. He's just finished his first book, Mike Boone's Guide to Dieting, a send up of diet/fitness books.