Last week, we were able to finally sell the desk that was in the nursery. This room used to be an "office" that was rarely used as such, but became more of a storage area. Over the summer, it was the room that our intern (and wonderful adopted family member who's home with us for Thanksgiving) used and called home, so the desk was helpful to him for working on sermons, etc. But now, the desk has finally found a new home, and we were able to find that home without the use of Craigslist.
First, let me say that we are not opposed to buying from Craigslist. There are certainly some great deals out there to be had. But we were a little uncomfortable with the idea of having someone we didn't know walking through our entire house to retrieve this desk, if they decided they wanted it at all. If it had been a smaller piece, we could have easily done the delivery through a neutral place, such as Benny's work.
So, I advertised the sale of the desk through my school. I started by writing up a brief description of the piece, including photos, and listing our suggested price. I included the fact that the buyer would need to pick up the piece, since we didn't have a truck that could haul it. I sent this out through our school email, and within a few days had a few potential buyers. One really interested party arranged to come see the desk one evening, and she liked it enough to pay our $50 price. We decided to throw in the desk chair for free, since we wouldn't need it anymore, and that seemed to sweeten the deal for her. We felt good about the whole thing, as she had recently relocated and needed the desk and is a single teacher working on a small budget.
(Thankfully, I work in a place where this is not banned, but you should definitely check company policy before sending out an email or posting flyers.)
Clearing out the desk made room for us to be able to put together the borrowed crib, which really made the room start to feel like the baby's. Once the desk was moved, we were also able to plan better for the artwork on the walls, etc. And we're hoping to put the money from the sale of the desk toward reupholstering a chair from my grandmother's house. It's a cute barrel backed chair with nice arms which should be great for the nursery. We'll have it reupholstered in a fairly neutral fabric so that it can move to a different location later in life, if it needs to, and we can punch it up with a throw pillow or two.
Have you had any success with selling items online or at work? What transformations have you made to your home in the past few months? I'd love to hear from you!
