Every three or four years or so stuff just tends to pile up around me. In the coding world, bits of stuff that glom onto a project over time is called cruft. So I had a lot of techno cruft laying around the house. Old hard drives, laptops, a bunch of software and console games, a couple of iMacs that served us well for a long time. So I began to systematically assess the current “state of the state” as it were and do something about it. I began trading stuff in and selling stuff on eBay.
Trading stuff in tends to be more immediately lucrative, as most places will offer you “more” for in store credit. Sure you could sell the items potentially for cash in the same or higher amount, but the convenience of the in store credit can be super useful if it is for things you want that they sell at a good price. You can also, I should mention, donate stuff, as I did with one or two laptops that run Windows 7 just fine but weren’t really worth selling.
As such my old but faithful iMac got turned into, with some trading, a brand new 27 inch model along with an external 512gb SSD and 16gb of high speed RAM. I was able to score a Titanfall edition Xbox One essentially for free. Rochelle went from an old 24 inch 2008 iMac to an Alienware laptop hooked to a 27 inch monitor. Meanwhile my desk and the associated areas are becoming cleaner.
I’m even upgrading my Internet line. Isomedia, the ISP I have done business with for 11 years, simply cannot offer my house any better connection than 7mb down/768k up. That’s been ok for 11 years but in todays world of streaming netflix while downloading the latest Xbox One game that ain’t gonna cut it. So I bit the bullet and for a cheaper price per month I’m having a 110mb down/10 mb up connection installed today. Yay for progress.
Point being there’s certainly been times in my life when I’ve consumpted conspicuously. So it feels good to take a lot of stuff laying about, trade it in or donate it, and get one or two new things without having to spend some money. Maybe you have something laying about you can do the same with. I can only say trust me, it’s worth the time.