As I write this, I’ve just consummated my first Kijiji sale. And it feels good. It couldn’t have happened without my daughter-in-law, Carrie. She’s a pro?and more conveniently located than our farm, which is a hundred kilometres from Edmonton. No one will travel that distance for anything but the biggest items.
Carrie offered her help, I believe at least in part, so that I’d never again bring up the idea of a garage sale at their place. Come on, aren’t my designer bags more likely to fetch a pretty penny in Sherwood Park than in small-town Alberta? She wants no part of it, so instead she posts my listings and uses her address.
Because I don’t want to push my luck, so far I’ve only given her three smallish items to sell: a Tungsten E2 Palm Pilot and accessories, a five-piece tapestry Oscar de la Renta luggage set, and a beautiful wooden jewellery box. It was the Palm Pilot that sold.
I told Roy that we should try to finance next January’s trip to our niece’s destination wedding in Mexico strictly by Kijiji sales. $80 down; much, much more to go.
So far he’s been far better at buying than selling. That in itself borders on near miraculous, because a short 18 months ago he couldn’t turn on a computer.
To date he’s bought a Hesston swather from a John Deere dealership in St. Paul and two pickup trucks in private sales. Two old farm trucks chose the same year to die. With over 400,000 kilometres and a couple transmission jobs on one of them, we’ve gotten our money’s worth out of the old Chevy. The other one has also had its day and has served us well.
When Roy wrote off the third one, our newest, best truck (1999), in a collision with a deer, he turned into a crazy man. He’s logged countless hours looking at hundreds of pages of GM and Chevy listings on Kijiji. It was the first and last thing he did each day (and many times in between). When his original (wishful) budget doubled, the possibilities exploded. We’ve looked at several; he’s test driven some. Now It’s crunch time. With deposits on two separate dealer trucks and a third private sale in limbo, the time is now to stop looking, dammit, and just buy a truck.
The decision is just days away and I, for one, will be glad to have it over. I’m not sure what he will do to fill his days, but you can be sure I’ll be pushing him to put as much time and energy into unloading some stuff as he did in spending money. I keep reminding him you can sell stuff on there too!
Maybe with this first small success I should try again with the professional circular mat cutter. There’s also the cattle squeeze and the old International Harvester seed drill. we’ll need some bigger sales to get us to Cancun, from where I sit.
Hazel Anaka’s first novel is Lucky Dog. Visit her website for more information or follow her on Twitter @anakawrites.