My sister convinced me to read 

This book is pretty simple and if you have too much stuff in your closets, house or life, I suggest you download or pick up a copy.  The basic premise of the "KONMARI" Method of tidying up is to go through every single piece of "stuff" in your house and only keep what you really love (or need).  

I started with my closet and I have to say, Marie Kondo gave me permission not to feel bad about discarding just about 1/2 of my clothing.  She doesn't tell you to throw or giveaway things that you haven't worn in a year or don't fit. She just says to decide if each thing, whether it be a pair of socks or a super expensive dress, brings you joy. If not, you are free to toss it.   As I was going through each and every single item in my closet, the permission that Kondo gave to let go of things that I was hanging onto because they cost a lot or "in case of" was fantastic. The guilt of my stuff was gone. It was quite liberating.  

If a sweater was itchy, out it went. If a top never looked good on me, out it went. If shoes were designer but hurting my feet, they disappeared too. That outfit that was on sale but was sitting there waiting in case I ever got invited to the Hamptons was also pitched. (If you invite me to your house in the Hamptons, I'll go buy something new!) 

It all felt great.  But what to do with the stuff.  Bags and Bags were donated but some of the stuff was really good. Kondo does not endorse pawning the stuff onto your friends and family unless they really want it. 

I had three other avenues that I used to make a little bit of dough from the things that were not bringing me happiness.

1. Ebay.  You knew that was coming right????

 I am a big Ebayer and my Ebay store is just rocking right now. 

Here is an example of something that was just clogging up my closet and now is residing in my bank account. Not a big sale at all.  However, it was like found money.

Sometimes even those "gift with purchase" things that are so compelling when you're in the store but you never actually use are worth a little change.  

This was a little Burberry Pouch that came with Perfume. It was just sitting there unused with about a million other little toiletry bags. It sold for $34.99!

If you have been holding on to your Crap stuff, you might want to search completed items on Ebay. You might find that some cash might make you happier than a Trapper Keeper Notebook from the 80's

Yes, this authentic, Original Notebook from 8th grade sold for $35 bucks (including free shipping). Sometimes it does pay to be a packrat. Not really.

By the way, with the ebay app for smart phones, you can just take a photo, fill out the form and list away. So much simpler than in the olden days.   Just remember to promptly ship out once your stuff sells!

2. Like Twice  If you're too busy to Ebay your clothes and handbags, you might want to check them out.  They only buy certain brands but they either send you a bag to fill up or you print out a label and just ship out to them. They will either buy your items outright or give you a Target Gift Card or a store credit for everything that they want.   You probably won't make as much as you do on ebay but it is way easier.  I am about to ship them a box of designer jeans that certainly are not bringing me joy sitting in my closet mocking me because they don't fit or look good.  I expect to take in about $10 per pair.  Certainly not anything close to what they cost new but still easy money and better than nothing!

3. After I moved out of the closet, I started in on my china cabinet and I found this company…

 Replacements.com  This company will buy certain pieces of china and crystal.   They don't buy everything but I had a partial set of China that was not "bringing me joy" and I sent them a few photos and they shot me back a quote that was quite nice and did bring me joy.  Now I'm bubble wrapping and packing it up.  This site also sells replacement pieces so if there is a set of dishes or glasses that you love but have lost or broken along they way, they will help you make a full set! 

Here is the china I am shipping to them. 

I'm still Konmari-ing. It make take quite a long time to get rid of everything in my house that is not bringing me joy.  The next stop is the kid's room  That should be lots of fun.  During last summer's annual "clean up their room while they are away" festival  uncovered an uneaten sandwich in a backpack . Seriously. 

If you've tried Konmari, I'd love to hear about it!

I'm famous...

As many of my readers know, I am, among other things, an eBay seller.  I was chosen by eBay to take part in a branding experiment.  They teamed me up with Vistaprint (a longtime favorite of mine) and helped me makeover my eBay "store".  

The gave me a new logo and banner and gave me new business cards and postcards to include with my packages. They gave me suggestions how to freshen up my online store.  Click Here for the story about the results which is featured on ebay.com!

Super exciting. Maybe they can makeover the blog next!!!!

American Sniper Giveaway Winners!

Thanks to everyone who entered (and promoted) this giveaway and thanks to Warner Brothers for offering the AMERICAN SNIPER Dvd/Blu Ray to my readers

Warner Brothers sent me a free copy to keep as well as the two to giveaway but I'm giving that one away too because I saw the film in the theater.

If you did not win, it is out today so you can pick up a copy (Trust me, it is GOOD!)

The winners are:
Katrina,
Traveling Bells 
and Kim Ratunen.

I've sent them all emails and once they send me their addresses (via email) I will ship right out. 

By the way, if you did not win, keep stopping by my blog or subscribe to it. I have fallen onto some mysterious "list" and companies often give me stuff to giveaway. When I'm not giving away stuff, I giveaway free advice and opinions! Sometimes I will even make you laugh!


Thanks to everyone who served or who loves someone who serves our country!

WWJD (What would Japolina Do?)

    I cycle on boardwalk on the beach near my house very early every single morning that I can get my butt out of bed.  The weather man has lied twice this week and said that it was not going to rain when it did. Today, I got caught in a sun shower during the last part of my ride. It actually made me very happy even though I was kind of ticked at that darn weatherman.

   
   After my ride, I pulled my car into a gas station to fill up. (By the way, I've had my Prius for about a year and half and have probably filled up only around 40 times. It really gets an average of 50 mpg and is my favorite car that I have ever owned even though it looks like a computer mouse on wheels). Filling up the Prius takes about two minutes because of it's small gas tank but I'm very paranoid when I fill up with gas here in the big city.  Years ago, one of my girlfriends had her purse stolen out of the passenger seat while she was filling up and her baby was in the back in a car seat. This story scarred me for life. Thank g-d the creepy crook only stole her purse and not her baby! Since that time, whenever I fill up, I am on high alert.

    As I was finishing up, a Russian lady approached me. I think she was in her early 60's and had a car at another pump.  She asked me in perfect English, "What do I do to get the gas?" My spidey senses started to tingle. My first instinct would be to help someone in need but I had a weird feeling. I said "You should go ask inside". She would not budge."What did you do to get gas?" and "Can you help me?" were her next two questions. 

     Maybe she really needed help, but she likely had a driver's license as she was driving a car. She spoke perfect English, so why couldn't she just read the instructions on the pump? It just seemed weird. 

   As a women, we are told to go with our gut. Was she going to distract me while her accomplice was going to grab my precious (iPhone) out of my car and make a run for it? Was she going to rob me? Was she going to kidnap me? Or was she just in need of help?

    I know that my sweet husband would have walked over to the pump, explained it to her and probably would have pumped the gas for her but he is a bad-ass. 

   What would you do? I was in a nice part of town but I do live in a big metropolitan area and there is crime on the news all day, every day.  

     I said that I was in a rush and jumped in my car and hightailed it out of there as fast as my Prius could go. I felt guilty for a second but better safe than sorry right? Kind of sad comment on today's society. What would you do?  
   

Is this the new normal….

     We all know that motherhood today is quite different from motherhood in the good old days. Moms today are way more involved.   On paper, it seems like this is a good thing. We take interest. We pay attention. We know what are kids are doing in school and afterwards. Over the years, we co-ordinate teams of experts pretty much from "mommy and me" to "college counselors"   to make sure that the kids have a talent in something, can swim and play sports, never fail a class and get into college. 

   The term is helicopter mom. I don't think that I am one of them but I certainly have to stay on top of everything that the minors in my home are doing, tell them what to do most of the time and yell about stuff a lot.  Maybe I am hovering a bit but it is too late to stop now. We are almost at the finish line.  Over the next three years, G-D willing, both of my kids will get accepted to college (in another city)  and I can be pretty much done.  Sure I'll have to fund their lives, but not continue to manage their lives, right? 

   When I went to college, my parents drove me up, dropped off my stuff in my dorm room and then headed to their hotel bar for some celebratory cocktails. I'm sure that they were toasting each other to something like  "one down, one to go".  I did not want them to unpack or decorate my dorm room and they did not offer.  I wanted them to leave town and let me start my life.   Obviously I depended on them for the rest of college for financial support (and once in a while advice) but they were not involved in my day-to-day operations during my University years or anytime after that.

Mug from nordstrom

    These days, it appears that the helicopter moms don't land when their kids go off to college. In fact, they seem way too involved.  According to my research, which mostly consists of the reading of Facebook posts of my friends, mothers today not only drop their kids off at college on the first day, they must help them decorate their dorm rooms so that they look Pinterest worthy. This does not appear to be a one shot deal either. Some of my friends move their kids into their new digs every single year of college and help them decorate.  Huh? I don't think that my parents even saw where I lived after my sophomore year at college. They just kept sending checks. It was the perfect arrangement. 

    Then there are the weekends visiting. Not just once a year. These parents are heading into college towns for multiple visits per school year. I love my folks but I specifically recall that when they did visit, it seriously put a crimp in my style.  Sure the annual visits which included some fancy meals and some shoe shopping were great but I was happy when they hightailed it back home so I could continue with my college life.  And it was not just me. I don't ever remember any of my roommates or sorority sisters getting more than one visit a year from anyone in their families, if that. 

     Another friend whose son is a college freshman bragged that her son and she text all day long.    I think that it is great that they communicate but isn't he supposed to be making friends and learning how to play beer pong. If he wanted to talk to his mom all day, maybe he should have saved her the $60,000 a year (this is a true figure) and gone to community college. 

     Even worse, a Facebook friend of mine posted photos of herself  at her daughter's law school orientation.  I went to law school and I don't remember ever meeting (or even hearing about) anyone's parents unless they were hiring law clerks. Is my friend going to sneak into court for her first trial? Will she yell at the Judge if he rules against her baby?  Let's hope not.

    Another friend's son recently got accepted to college. This was exciting news because he did not always seem to be the college-bound type. I called her up to tell her how jealous I was that she was done with the college planning and  to say "Mazel Tov! Congrats! You did it! The bird is leaving the nest!" Instead of being excited she is already fretting about what she is going to line up for him after college. "What is he going to do for the rest of his life?", she cried.   

    Seriously, isn't that what kids are supposed to figure out in college.   

* I reserve the right to delete this post in the very near future when my sons become college bound!

   

Is there a term for this?

         I was once a working mother. A super busy trial lawyer one. I sometimes left the house before my baby woke up and got home after he went to sleep, so I was also a very-guilty-feeling-working mother.

   After I found out that my live-in-nanny was pretty much a crazy person, I instantly quit my career and I was then a stay-at- home mother. I was all in. In one fell swoop, I went from carrying a briefcase to pushing a double stroller around every single mall in South Florida during the especially hot and rainy summer of 2000 to keep the three of us from going crazy.

t-shirt available at Zazzle.com

   I then became a hybrid of the two. I work out of my house.

    I deal with all of the stay-at-home mother stuff like doing a million loads of laundry (per week!), cooking, carpooling, homework,  being on the PTA, class projects, extra-curricular activities, attending teacher conferences and school events,  finding SAT tutors, and on and on and on and on.

    I also have two paying jobs and write this blog (for free) and do all three from my home office which happens to be located in my bedroom.   I've had a successful eBay consignment business for over ten years and a couple of years ago I started do some freelance trial consulting for a few attorneys that I know.  

    It would probably be easier to just hire a live in housekeeper and go back to work full time. I'm sure that getting a job outside the home would be more lucrative than to do all three of these other jobs at home.  

    I really do like being a stay-at-home mother though. I like the flexibility of being able to be present for the fun stuff that happens during the work day like events at school but more importantly, I need to be around when things are not going well like when someone needs to go to the doctor or needs mommy to make grilled cheese for lunch when a bad cold hits. With my kids now teenagers, I  think being around to make sure everyone is keeping in check is also not a bad idea. 

   However, when you work out of your house, no one else thinks that you are really that busy.  Everyone from my friends, to the other PTA  moms, to my very own large extended family, seems to forget  that I am working during the day. While you would never call a business executive during the day to ask him to drop what he was doing to help you out at the book fair because three mom's canceled, it seems to happen to me on a regular basis. 

    Can we coin a new term for me that will tell everyone that I actually work during the day, especially during school hours? I will print it up on business cards under my name.  "Work-at-home mother" sounds too much like "stay-at-home mother". "Domestic Engineer" is a fancy name for a housewife.  Please help as I am stumped.

Make a little extra cash...

I used to try to write these types of posts on a regular basis, but I've been so busy selling on eBay that I have not had time to blog very much. I started to compose posts on how to start selling on eBay but they are not complete yet. Check back soon.

In the meantime, these are items that I recently sold in my two ebay "stores".   These are things that you may have piled up around the house and are considering donating.  STOP! You may have cash in those closets.  Many of my consignment clients think that I can only sell high end designer goods for them, but this is not necessarily true. Sure, a Chanel handbag will bring in the big bucks, but common items, when in demand, can bring in some mad money.

For example, I sold two pairs of my own old 
FitFlop Sandals this month for over $50 each. They were in good condition, but they were not new.

That's 100 bucks to buy new shoes! 

This cool vintage Ralph Lauren belt was in the "donate" pile of one of my clients. It sold for $80

                           

Another client is moving and digging in to the depths of their clutter and pulled this gem out. This looked like a high school graduation present from the 70's. It was never used. It quickly sold for $67! 

A friend's kid loves Lego sets. He builds them once and then leaves them around the house for adults to step on. I now sell them for him. Even incomplete sets like this one bring in decent money… It sold for $100 and his feet are much happier.

My point here is that sometimes even unglamorous items sell for decent money. 

I've been an eBay Top-Rated Seller since 2000. I sell on consignment. If you live in South Florida and are interested in consigning items with me, e-mail me at LuckyEyeBeads@gmail.com

My eBay "stores" are SouthBeachChic and CasaChic