How To Get Rich Quickly Using Rubber Poop

Husband has recently decided he’s a minimalist. Of course, he didn’t use that word for it, and I had to explain what “minimalist” meant when I told him that was what he was going for.

Coincidentally, I had discovered The Everyday Minimalist on Pinterest the day before. My typically anti-reading husband read about five posts before diving in head first and declaring that he wanted to purge all the junk from our home.

Awesome. Anyone who knows me knows that I love the trash can. I love to throw away useless crap, and even sometimes, crap that really isn’t crap and that I wish I still had. On the flip side, Husband is one of those people who owns more stuff than many people three times his age. It’s baffling, really. Probably about 10% of the stuff in this house is actually mine.

Honey, I think it’s time to go through the bedroom closet. (Photo credit: sigma.)

Thus began our quest to go through the contents of the house and sell it all. Husband was convinced that we had a personal gold mine of possessions and that the eBay community would be tripping over themselves to get to the computer before it was all gone.

NOOOO!! Must…buy…before…gone….(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We started in the game room. Neither of us could bear to part with our vintage game systems, which include the Intellivision, Atari 2600, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo64, and original XBox. However, we did realize that we had about 30 games that we never play. Husband and I are not sports fans, so all of the sports-themed games went into the sell pile. Eventually, we put most of our CDs, records and a few VHS tapes in there, too. (Except for the signed copy of a George Jones LP. Husband couldn’t bear to part with it.)

For years, I have been begging Husband to part with The Silly Shelf. The Silly Shelf is – you guessed it – a shelf. It contains the most ridiculous of trinkets and toys from Husband’s lifetime. It has made its ugly home in our bedroom and makes one think that a 12-year-old boy lives there, rather than a married couple. Here is a breakdown of the type of items on this shelf:

• A radio in the shape of an orange
• A rubber pile of poop
• A “Fart Fan”
• A plastic cat that dances when you squeeze the buttons on the side
• Numerous Bart Simpson trinkets
• A Homer Simpson watch that says “Mmmm…burger” when you press it
• The Taco Bell chihuahua
• A block of soap with a Troll suspended inside
• About 25 similar treasures

Unfortunately, when Husband’s father heard that we were parting with The Silly Shelf, he couldn’t bear to see it go away. He asked to keep the treasures, which means they’re still around. Le sigh. Anyway, they’re out of my bedroom.

So, we continued our quest into the office closet. This is another area where Husband and I have disagreed upon what should be there. His software, which consists of mostly floppy disks for DOS games, has taken up an entire shelf in our closet for years. Thankfully, he kept about 5 of his favorites to play on the 486 computer that’s in our bedroom and put the rest in the pile.

Since Husband works during the day and I’m on summer break, he put me in charge of the Sales Department. I began to scour eBay for the worth of our beloved treasures. Honestly, I was kind of excited. Yes, I thought. We’re going to get rid of all this junk and get a ton of money in return!

In the words of Dwight Schrute…

FALSE.

It’s all worthless. The completed listings were filled with red (non-selling) prices, such as $1.99 with free shipping. In other words, we’d have to pay someone to take this crap from us. So, does anyone want a copy of Madden ’94 for Super Nintendo?

I’ll even throw in a fake rock made of foam.