Clearing the clutter and raising money

With so many things we want to do over the next four months I've realised I really have to knuckle down and focus on raising extra funds. Even though we have savings, I hate dipping into them. They're our security.

I've been doing some thinking lately. There's a lot of stuff I'm hanging on to hoping to one day have the time to do something with them. The sad reality is that even if I did have the time my life has moved on and I no longer have the same tastes or desires that I once had. I've been buying things from car boot sales and charity shops for years, storing them away thinking "one day I'll get them out and do something with them" but nothing happens.

Well, that day has now come, in a manner of speaking. I'm going to sell off the things I no longer have a strong affinity for, clear some space and raise some money at the same time. I need to separate what is important to me from the unrealistic little hoarder in me that wants to collect, and collect, and collect! My aim is raise £1000 selling off all of this stuff by the first week of January. That way I'll have the money to pay for the fleece to be processed into wool and put the rest towards spending money for a holiday in January.

I didn't realise until earlier this evening that this stuff is really distracting as well. I feel unfocused, torn in separate directions by it all. It actually makes me feel guilty and negative, which I can well do without.

For example, my knitting machine. I realised last week that knitting machines take a lot of sustained time to learn how to use. All I'm doing is sitting down every few months for a day or two, spending half the time trying to remember how to use it and then getting started on something and stopping part way because life or work takes off. A few months later I'll come back to it, feel guilty, unravel what I was working on and the negative cycle then repeats itself. I know I'm not going to be free to spend that sort of time in the future, and if I do have a sustained period of free time I'm slightly ashamed to admit using the machine is not something I will rush to do. I have too many other things I want to do.

So tonight I pulled out my knitting machine and all of its accessories, cleaned it up, photographed it, wrote an ad and listed it. Hopefully, someone else out there will get a great deal on it and I'll be happy that it is going to a good home, not to mention dumping the guilt and getting my hobby room table back.