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MARCH MADNESS CHALLENGE!
Yes, yes, it’s the 2nd of the month. Sosumi!
Okay, for this challenge you’re going to find a category that bugs the ever-lovin-cr*p out of you! It’s that one category that you have stuff that you totally, utterly, completely, irredeemably HATE to list. You don’t like to photograph, or you hate the returns, or you don’t know how to research. Whatever the reason, you have these things that are Death Pile Lifers because you don’t want to list them.
The March Madness Challenge is to find ALL of the items in that category that you have. All the stuff you have lurking in closets, stuffed into drawers, hidden in boxes on the highest shelf, cuddling with the dust bunnies under the bed, or covered with as much junk as you can possibly find in the hopes that they suffocate and you don’t have to deal with them. Now list those suckers! Or donate them, if you absolutely cannot bear to deal with them. You have two options: list, or gone. Not sort-them-out-later, not but-i-have-to-repair-a-widget, not even i-know-there-is-a-piece-missing. List them as-they-come-out, or list-condition-needs-repair/missing-a-piece. Or they go to Goodwill. We want these items OUT OF HERE!
It’s a madness challenge because we have to be stark raving loony to deal with these things!
For each week that you LIST OR DONATE items (note, not find them) you will get a bonus point towards the end of the year.
Ahhhh…. that hurts so bad, Julie. Hugs to you in this time of loss and sorrow.
Lacy, we don’t log the skittles. We put up our numbers each week for the accountability and to brag to others who understand how much work it takes to get even one skittle crossed off!
Spreadsheet updated, VT takes the win!
Apologies for posting late, I was out the whole day yesterday and, to be honest, didn’t give it a thought when I got home, I was exhausted.
All your bonus points have been added onto the spreadsheet. Julie takes the win again this week. Don’t despair, everyone, it’s early days yet. Although, as Sharyn has demonstrated over and over (and over) again, consistency is a major factor in winning the year!
Speaking of… adore the Fashion Statement Sharyn! 😀 I’m glad you love the straps, I was concerned they were too long. It’s fully quilted and… fully washable! Yep, chuck it in your washer and dryer like any other laundry item. The first time you put it through the wash, use Dawn Dish Detergent instead of laundry detergent and add a color catcher or two. These colors shouldn’t run, but I always do that just in case. Dawn’s special ingredients have a dye stabilizer that causes colors to lock. After that first wash, just add the bag to your usual laundry load, no special care needed.
For extra specialness, the bag is ecofriendly too. The batting is polyester made of recycled plastic bottles! I love the stuff, it quilts up great and is so easy to care for, plus it’s helping the planet. I hope you get lots of use out of it.
Listed 12 items this week. Not a brilliant week for me, unfortunately.
Such fun to see you all have given the pop up challenge a go. Did you find it interesting to see how your times compared to what you thought they were? And I loved Julie’s comment about them going faster because they’re timed – it sure does bring the exercise into focus! If you try doing this every day for a week, by the end of the week you’ll be more in tune with “normal” practices and you’ll get a better idea of your “real” time.
I’m also thrilled to see you all still working on the skittles. So satisfying to cross them off, especially when they’re things that have been hanging over your head forever!
POP UP CHALLENGE!
Inventory time! No, not stock. Time! Yep. I want you to pick a task and write down all the sections of it (could use Google Keep for this.) Then time yourself as you do it. You don’t need to be exact – “around 8 mins” is perfect.
The aim of this task is to work out how much time you actually spend on what you do. For example, my average photography session goes like this:
1. about 20 mins clearing my photography area and prepping
2. approx 10 mins setting up lights and getting them correct
3. around 30 mins taking actual photographs
4. roughly 10 mins cropping all photos to square
5. less than 5 mins downloading to PC (Android updates to cloud as I’m working, so there’s no upload time)
6. over an hour editing.You see why I absolutely HATE photography?
If I was to do this over a period of several days, I would have a more accurate time for each task, because I could average it out to give me realistic data. This allows me to go over the task breakdown and work out how to get better. For example, after a lot of agonizing, I invested in an i7 Apple phone and changed to taking photos with it. It has an automatic Square option, which has reduced my editing time #4 to zero, and has also reduced my editing time #6 because with Vivid, the colors are more true than my Pixel. (Sometimes!) However, it doesn’t auto upload photos, so #5 has gone up to about 15 mins, or even longer. I spend this time packing up my items and putting on the SKU numbers. If I really don’t have time to waste, I just take the photos and let them sit until the next day, when it’s only a few mins to download. Knowing my numbers helped me substantially change 3 of my 6 sub-tasks. Still room for improvement, but my photography time has reduced from an entire half day, to only a couple hours. Now I’m working on having a permanent set up so that I don’t have to spend so much time with set up and lighting. And trying to clear my space so that I’m not having to clear away all the clutter to get to it.
You don’t have to do this for photography. You could do it for cleaning, or packing, or sourcing, or research, or listing, or a part of listing (like those danged Item Specifics!) If you really want to be an overachiever, you could do your entire eBay process!
Pop up challenge: everyone who does this and posts an ACTUAL timeline gets one point towards the annual prize. Latest post about it on Monday evening, and I’ll update the spreadsheet on Tuesday. Discussion during the week is always welcome.
Spreadsheet updated, Julie takes the win again! It was close, though, VT only one short.
Nope, Sharyn, me neither. I had a HUGE bag of Barbie clothes a couple years ago that I sold as a single lot. Now I’m kicking me. It had a lot of really cute stuff in it, like shoes, handbags, coats, but I didn’t know that Barbie clothes had any value.
A big fat goose egg for me this week. However, I DID finish Sharyn’s prize for winning last year! It will go in the post today or tomorrow (not sure if I’ll make it into town today) so you should have it by the end of the week. I’m hoping it will go First Class, but if not, it will be PFRE.
Skittles, quite a few. The guys came in to replace the window in the sunroom that was the wrong size (their error) so it’s finally done. Did I tell you Himself said I am to use it as my sewing room? I have, accordingly, been moving “all this crap out of the house!” LOL. I’ve got some shelving in and packed and I’ve arranged a lot of stuff. It is such a great feeling to be able to put stuff away in its place, and find it again instantly! Clearing stuff out of the house doesn’t always mean it goes into the sunroom – I’ve done a fair amount of decluttering too, so Goodwill has more junk to sell.
Everyone knows the upside to decluttering. One of the unexpected downsides, though, is how much it motivates you to do more. I’m finding that I’m beginning to look at stuff through rather cynical eyes. Do I really need this widget? I mean, really really? Do we have to have two plates? How about we just have one and share? It would be great for the diet! 😀
Spreadsheet updated and Julie has a slamdunk for this week’s win!
VL, goal adjusted as requested.
This week, I’m not going to give you a Keep Tip. Instead, I’m going to challenge you to take another look at your To Do List and see if you can clear some out with the One Minute Rule.
The rule is simple. If a task is going to take you less than one minute to complete, do it now – don’t let yourself put it off until later.
So many things can be accomplished in 60 seconds or less: sending a quick email, putting those dirty dishes into the dishwasher instead of the sink, opening the mail instead of leaving it on the counter to deal with eventually.
By making yourself take action quickly, you prevent these small tasks from adding up and ultimately overwhelming your TDL.
Bonus: any task you knock off using this rule counts as a skittle at the end of the week.
Ready? GO!
Whaddya know? Got to the cabin this morning and I actually DID list two items last week! I honestly had such a rough week, I didn’t even realize it. Good job I log my listings on my calendar!
@Sharyn, you are such a sweetie! I know you were kidding. I consider every one of you Elves special enough to make it worth it, so it’s not about that. However, you have won so many times that you have had pretty much everything, so I came up with something completely new and different for you. Your color preferences did not match what I had had printed, which is entirely my fault, because I got the printing done before I thought to match the fabrics. It’s on me – not you! However, I know I did good in the end because Himself, who is the pickiest person I know, admired it and said it’s pretty. Woot!@VintageLacy Have you tried Folex? It’s a carpet cleaner, but it’s magic for stains on almost anything fabric. No need to wet and blot either. My standard method is to place a cotton cloth over the mouth of the bottle, tip the bottle to soak that section of cloth, then blot the stain with the wet cloth. Allow to dry and admire. No washing, scrubbing, vacuuming, etc. Great stuff!
One day my grandson spilled a large to-go of strawberry milkshake all over the car seats on a trip. It was several hours before we got to where we were going and the best we could do at the time was mop up the mess with the to-go napkins. It was about 4 days before we got home. Folex cleaned up the mess with no problems, and I had no rotten-milk-spoiled smell in the car either.
Dunno how it would work on Barbie clothes, but it’s cheap. I bought a gallon for about $11. You can get it at Home Depot or Walmart, or a bunch of other places. It’s expensive on Amazon.
@Sharyn. ROFL Versace. I wish! 100% cotton, my friend, my budget doesn’t stretch to even getting to the front door of a Versace. I worked on it this weekend, but as it’s my own design, I blooped on the quantity and have to go back and get a little more of one fabric. I’ll get it this week, then finish up next weekend. (I hope!)
@everyone This will be my last year of handmade prizes. I’ve been looking at my expenses and they are getting so expensive to make and ship. Last year I had three of them! It has been six years of prizes, so you’ve all had a good run. Future prizes will be an Amazon gift card or something small. Something digital that I don’t have to ship. Apologies, but the time and money investment is becoming overwhelming. I love making them, but I think I’m done.
No listings for me this week. I’ve had so much happening. Firstly, two days were taken up with clearing out my booth. Last Monday I cleared out the smalls, as mentioned, the 2nd day I went back with Himself and cleared out the furniture. The furniture in the booth is high-ticket good quality, so I swapped it for the thrift store specials inside the house and ferried all the cheap stuff down to Goodwill. I had been working on decluttering in my house, so I had a lot of stuff to drop off at GW at the same time. Yay for decluttering! We had one day power outage, the power only came on at 4AM the next morning. And we had our Winter Storm blast in like Thor riding the wind. Great fun!
Skittles, however, knocked out 7 of them. I’ve been arranging our new sunroom into our sunroom/my sewing room (per Himself’s instruction!) and it’s taking shape. Lots of organizing and shuffling, which not only frees up space inside the house, but has opened up options for decluttering too. It’s motivating to see spaces clear up!
Heyup! Forgot – @Sharyn. Apologies for the delay on your prize. The lady who does my printing could not take my order until the new year and has several major family issues. I got it back and spent an hour and a half yesterday selecting fabrics to go with it. Hopefully it will be done within the next couple weeks.
Spreadsheet updated – well done on the great win, Jules!
It seems to be a tough year for everyone. Several folks I’ve spoken to lately have commented on how unimpressed they have been with the new year – it has not brought the new beginnings so earnestly hoped for. Think of it this way: all the crap for the year is being dealt with in advance. From now on, things will only get better!
Google Keep Tip: did you know you can put reminders into GK? Yep. In your note, there is a bell icon with a + in it. You can use a preset reminder day/time (create these in Settings) or go to a custom setting. So, for example, you could add a reminder for Monday at 8AM (9AM?) to post your Skittles on the forum. Or, if you create a note about an Estate Sale, say, with address and time, you could set a reminder so that you don’t forget to go to the sale.
Caveat: the reminder is for the NOTE, not for the line items within the note.
Only 4 listings and 5 skittles completed last week.
Today I cleared out my antique booth. I’ve decided not to work with it any more. In my new position, I was making money, but not enough to justify working an 8-hour day, with over an hour’s commute, and destroying my knee in the process. Not only that, the new management is not very pleasant to work with. In the end, I decided it just wasn’t worth the hassle. Now I have all the stuff that I brought back to either list or donate.
Forgot to give you your Google Keep Tip.
Color-coding your notes is a useful way of bringing some order to your Google Keep experience. But there’s also the option of adding background images to those notes you really want to stand out.
Open the notes you want to color. Tap the background options button (it looks like a painter’s palette), and alongside the standard choice of pastel colors you can also pick from nine images, each designed to fit a particular theme, like recipes or music. (I used the fireworks background and changed my background color to indigo. Sweet!)
