I just had a wonderful sense of happy gratefulness wash over me as my house-keeper left yet again, and equally as happy as I, with an armful of fabulous items in exchange for her past few weeks work.
In December I told the woman whom I'd been paying to clean my house on a bi-weekly basis, that I could no longer afford her services. What a terrible time for me to have to tell her that, let alone the fact that she was doing a great job and I really needed her. She was quite gracious and understanding about it, and even offered to come a few more times in exchange for a couple of leftover scrapbooking items that we had previously discussed bartering for. I happily agreed as her services would see me through the mess that was our Holiday Season.
After Christmas she continued to call and come as regularly as before, and mentioned that I still had things she was interested in. I finally just had to ask her how long she thought this arrangement was going to work out, because I didn't want to depend on her if she was going to quit coming one day. She just smiled and said, "Don't worry, you have lots of things that I want." I was stunned, as well as very grateful that she was willing to continue our bargain.
It is now approaching early march, and she has shown no sign of quitting anytime soon. She is a little more free about the time she arrives, and if there is a day here and there that she can't come, but otherwise just as dependable as always. So far I have given her a 6 foot folding table, a couple chairs, a food processor I wasn't using, some Quickutz metal alphabet dies for cutting letters out of paper, plastic drawer units, a dresser, and more. And she still keeps coming every week, twice a week. She leaves just as satisfied as I feel about being able to still have my home clean even though I am too busy right now to do it myself.
The more I have thought about it, the more grateful I have become. It has been a huge blessing in disguise, and I feel almost guilty about it because I am getting 2 things from it. One is a clean house, the second is I am little by little ridding my home of it's excess. Something I've been planning to do for a long time anyway. I had planned to list lots of stuff on ebay, which takes quite a bit of time. So now she just lets me know what things she is interested in and during the week I decide on a price for those items. I have explained to her that I really need to recover a fair price for my scrapbooking items, as I would be able to do on ebay. So some of the things that are more pricey she doesn't choose, but on other things I try to give her the best deal that I can. All in all you've got two happy ladies here!
A few months ago I was in my neighbors backyard and noticed they had recently disassembled their chain-link dog run and tucked it behind a shed. I asked what they were going to do with it and she just smiled and said, who knows! We don't need it. I immediately thought of how I could use it, and remembered us talking before about her buying some of my folding tables that I had inherited from a recent business purchase. So I offered to trade her those tables for the dog run. Well this week, her unwanted dog run was re-assembled in my backyard and covered with wire. It now houses our 13 baby chickens we've been raising the past few months.
The more I think about this, the happier I get. I have fallen into the trap in recent years of collecting too much stuff. And now I am in the position where I want to simplify, and I can't get what I want out of my stuff. People just won't pay very much for used stuff, no matter how nice or how valuable. And that can get frustrating. So I'm thinking I need to be more aware of what's going on around me so that I can use bartering more to trade value for value and get the things that I need without spending money. This accomplishes the 2 things I mentioned before. (1) I get what I need, and (2) I give up what I don't need. Could there be a better deal?? Well those are my thoughts on the subject today, I hope you enjoyed them! Maybe you'll try out bartering
now and see where (or what) it gets you. Bartering has literally made my life a breeze!
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One thing came to my mind that I think is a blessing too. Sometimes you can just give something away and not trade. And later someone may come and do that for you. So bartering works, but keep your eyes open just to see what blessings come from giving away to someone who needs what you have. I often wonder what blessings the family received from GIVING us an old upright piano that worked fine that all of my kids used thoroughly before we bought a new one a few years ago. We could have never afforded a piano back then and they just needed/wanted to get rid of it because they inherited another. What a huge blessing it was in our life.
I liked your thoughts. It's always nice when it works out and everyone is happy. AND I am definitely in the de-clutter mode.
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