Category: Products & Services (Page 9 of 24)

On giving stuff away

April 4, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Listia.com
It’s horrible, I’ve gone from ranting about Listia.com to starting to like it to literally become obsessed with it. I can’t tell you how many times in the last week I’ve logged in and search for free stuff. I thought this would stop when I got rid of all my credits (and I’m trying to), but as I keep losing auctions I still haven’t managed to do so, so far. Aaaack!

My main reason to list was to see if there was any interest in the (small) stuff I have. I’ve been throwing the caps from coke bottles forever, and I was surprised to see that people actually wanted the codes that come on them (go figure). As for the beads, these are the ones I have no use for (they came in packages of assorted beads I bought). I particularly hate the bumpy beads. I already had a bid on my bird beads, which was kind of surprising. Of course, I’ll have to pay the shipping to get rid of them.

And that continues to be the problem – it’s really not practical to have the “buyer” pay for shipping on low-weigh items (where the shipping charges are no more than $3), specially as paypal has such horrendous transaction fees. But then you are stuck not only giving something for free but having to pay for the privilege. Oh well, this is just a trial.

Freecycle

I continue to use the San Leandro Freecycle to give away most of my good stuff: things the kids have outgrown, stuff I no longer want, stuff my mother sends me (some specifically to put on freecycle), etc. Basically, freecycle is a mailing list where you post stuff you don’t want and people who want it e-mail you saying so. Generally you give the stuff to the first person who e-mails you about it. I’d say that I get responses to about 2/3rds of the stuff I post (people, for example, never want stuffed animals).
The problem with freecycle, however, is that people are very unreliable. I’d say that about half the time the person does not come to pick up the stuff they wanted. That means I have to keep it in my house for longer – which is exactly what I don’t want. I’m becoming more and more disillusioned with freecycle as time goes by (one of the reasons why I’m trying listia with small stuff – there are too few local users to make it viable for big stuff) – but there are few alternatives.

Thrift Town

Thrift town is our local thrift shop (well, there is also a goodwill but they don’t have good stuff). They pretty much take anything you have (I’m sure they throw away the stuff that won’t sell) and I love it for finding clothing for the kids and a knick-nack (read tea cup) here and there. The problem with them is that they have limited drop-off hours and that we are not good about just taking stuff there. Plus I’m not thrilled that they are a for-profit corporation. On the other hand, it’s the easiest place to drop off unwanted stuff.

Swaptree.com

Swaptree is a great place to exchange books. The way it works is that you list the books you have and no longer want, and the wants you want to get – and when they make a match they e-mail you and ask you whether you want to accept the trade. It’s cool because they don’t just do one-to-one matches. If someone you want book A and have book B, and John has book A and wants book C, and Jane has book C and wants book B a match is made. You also get to look through the books that you can “get now” by trading one of the books you already have – that’s a great way to find new books that might interest you. They also give suggestions of books that you might like.
I’ve used swaptree intensively, in particular in the couple of months after I signed up. Then I ran out of popular books and for months I was unable to get any book I wanted. I just checked it out again, with a few new books I wanted to get, and was able to get two of them (A Smart Girl’s Guide to Friendship Troubles and Oops! The Manners Guide for Girls) both for Mika. Of course, I’m paying as much to ship the books I have to send in return, as I would to just buy the books – but it’s still cool. The big problem with swaptree is that I have to keep the books at home until someone wants them, which can take months.

So now that I only have unpopular books at home, I think I will take them off swaptree and just donate them to the library.

Friends of the Library – San Leandro

If you have extra books, you should really donate them to Friends of the Library. Pretty much every library has an attached group of supporters who fundraise for library services. And they do provide great services, not just new books, but, in San Leandro, at least, they fund most of the activities for little children. With budget cuts as they are, these would not be around without the Friends.

Donating books there is quite easy – you just take them to the library whenever it’s open and give them to the people in the front desk. They’ll even give you a receipt for them that you can use for your taxes.

The problem for us is that we always forget to take them. We never forget to go to the library sale, though 🙂
So this is it, if you know of another method of easily and cheaply getting rid of stuff, please let me know.

Dollar Tree Photo paper – Thumbs Up

April 2, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Dollar Tree Photo paper
The kids and I just spent a while scrapbooking and organizing our supplies – and I’ve realized how much I’ve come to appreciate printing our own pictures. We’re not the kind of people who get pictures printed in the first place, so we don’t usually have many around to scrapbook with. Indeed, most of the printed pictures of the kids I have are the ones my mother has sent us.
But I do want us to have more recent pictures to use, and now we can print them affordably using the photo paper available at the Dollar Tree. The paper comes in two sizes: 8 8.5 x 11 sheets (which you can use to print 1 8×10, 2 5×7 or 4×6, 4 3.5×5 or 9 wallet size pictures) or 20 4 x 6 sheets. I personally prefer the 3.5 x 5 size for scrapbooking (if for no other reason than the frames I have are those sizes), so the larger sheets are more convenient for me – or they would be, if I was able to cut straight! Well, the frames hide the imperfections. I calculate that combining the cost of the paper and printing, I’m probably spending 4 to 5 cents per 3.5×5″ print and 7 cents per 4×6 print. That’s really not bad at all. Of course, my calculations might be off 🙂
What really surprises me is the quality of the prints. The paper is glossy and the prints look great – specially considering our low end printer. Of course, I don’t know how they’ll hold long term.

The Little Box of Spells

March 31, 2010 / / 0 Comments

The Little Box of SpellsThis weekend was Mika’s Birthday Party and she got several nice presents – but my favorite is the The Little Box of Spells she got from our friend Paz. We’re always looking for activities to do together, and this one couldn’t be cooler.
The tiny kit comes with a tiny book of spells, two pink tea candles, a “magic” stone and a small bottle of rose fragrance oil.
The spells are very cool. They focus on love, friendship, protection and emotional well being. Some of the spells included are for helping friends in need, gaining forgiveness, have good humor and cooling down anger. You can see that they may end up being successful just by garnishing your willingness and attention on the issue that’s bothering you. Also, they are general enough, that you can’t really say that they don’t work 🙂 I am not sure that I want Mika to believe in magic -after all, it’s not real, but the results of doing spells like this can very well be so. So for the time being, I’m willing to let her try.
What I also really like about the spells is that they only require things you are likely to have at home, and they usually give you a choice of ingredients. For example, Mika chose a spell to keep fears away, and this one required writing with an orange or red pen, and sprinkling ground ginger or thyme on the paper. There is nothing more frustrating that wanting to do a project (any kind of project) and not having the ingredients at hand.
In any case, thank you Paz for the lovely gift, I’m sure Mika will enjoy it.

Listia reconsidered

March 27, 2010 / / 0 Comments

A little over a week ago, I wrote a pretty negative review of listia.com, a site that lets you bid for stuff using “credits” rather than actual money.
My review was negative because the site purports to be “free”, but in reality there are too few users at the local level that can pick up the stuff you give away, so you end up having to pay for shipping either as a “seller” or a “buyer”. That’s not a big deal if you are shipping small things, but an issue for bigger ones (and everything I have to give away is large). On the plus side, I’ve noticed that sellers on listia actually seem to charge real shipping charges, unlike the inflated ones on e-bay. Plus, so far, we’ve gotten the things we won within a couple of days of winning them (but they were small).

I have to say that so far I’ve been really lucky with listia. I signed up and got my husband and sister to sign up as well. I was able to get a nice assortment of charms and a 1/2 oz of some essential oil mix. I have a few points left, so maybe I’ll be able to get something else.
makeupset.jpgMike, meanwhile, got a Hannah Montana bodypaint set and a lip bloss/body glitter set (he had to pay shipping for these, though). He still has points left as well. My sister got a kids make up set and also has points. So hopefully we’ll get even more stuff, for free.

Of course, after the next round of stuff we won’t have a way of getting enough points to get much. They do give you 5 points occasionally for signing in or bidding, and for putting them on your status in facebook, but most things do cost quite a lot of points. Still, I’m glad that I signed up for it and got some stuff for free – now, if there were only more users in San Leandro who would come and pick up the stuff I have to give away.
BTW, if you want to sign up for listia.com, please do it through my account, so I get some credits in the case you do manage to list something and get someone to bid on it.
—
Update. Well, it’s been one more week and I’ve come to realize that the listia experience is different for different users. Mike is quite lucky and often gets free credits for signing in, bidding and posting a listing to facebook. I rarely do. My sister is somewhere in the middle. I have no clue why this is so – what sort of formula listia uses to award points to some users and not others. It’s very frustrating for me as well, though 🙂

Something else I’ve figured out is that while listia charges 10-cents per credit (a ridiculous amount, and I can’t imagine anyone pays it), the actual “value” of a credit is closer to 1 to 1.5 cents. A $5 Walmart gift card, for example, tends to go for about 500 credits. So if you offer free shipping, you really need to make at least 40-credits on what you are giving away to not lose any money in the transaction. And that only works for things small and light enough to fit in a regular envelope.

Anyway, so far I’ve been unlucky with my auctions. I’ve placed some Golden Gate Ferry tickets on listia.com, worth $15, with a minimum bid of 50 credits and I haven’t gotten any bids (but that may be because of the geographical limitations of the item – listia still doesn’t seem to have that many users). I’ve just put some scrapbook frames & stickers, we’ll see how I do with that.

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