This is the coolest idea for making your own shelves.
You’ll need a collection of sturdy wooden boxes in various sizes, decorating materials, and two sections of heavy-duty strapping. Stick with wooden boxes. Because the assemblage will be under a fair amount of pressure when the unit is completed, you will likely find that even the sturdiest of cardboard boxes will not be up to the strain.
Paint and/or paper these boxes, inside and out, in any way that satisfies your creative heart. When the boxes are decorated, play with their placement until you get an arrangement that satisfies you.
Lay your two pieces of strapping on the ground, and place your boxes on top. Wrap the strapping around, pull tight, and that’s it! (Almost) instant shelving!
1 Comment
I’ve decided to have a yard sale. I want to get rid of my old bed from when I was a kid that’s currently living in our (second) guest bedroom (to be replaced by a space-saving click clack sofa bed) along with a bunch of broken computers and all sorts of crap that is sitting in my parents’ basement becoming mildewy. There is stuff in the basement left over from one of our church’s yard sales, and lots of old toys, and it’s all going to go.
Here are some comments I found here, here, here, here and here on how to have a yard sale:
The last time we had a garage sale we went to the trouble to put an ad in the paper. We made sure to mention the most prominent things we had for sale. In the ad we posted an 8am start time. At 7am there were people parked in the street out front. The items listed in the ad were gone within the first hour. I had no idea people really read those ads!
Look for ads for a large consignment sale or community yard sale in your area. Plan your garage sale for the same date. Just place a few signs leading from the exit of the heavily advertised sale to your house.
Here’s a tip about advetising on craigslist: include pictures of your items and a price list of what asking price would start at…. I made a good chunk of money, the drove the rest of my crap to the Salvation Army and donated a few hundred dolars woth of stuff. Hello tax return!
Keep your money in a belt, something like a toolbelt at your waist. Don’t use a money box. People run off with them. It can be annoying.
Don’t schedule the yard sale for more than one day. The second day will be leftovers nobody wants, and you’ll be exhausted.
Expect early birds, as early as five a.m., and welcome them. But don’t negotiate on price before the time you advertised you’d open. If they’re that eager for it, you know it’ll sell later, so why shortchange yourself? (Besides, it’s these peoples’ fault that you had to get up at 4am; they should pay.)
Mark everything, but be flexible. Especially later in the day. But don’t be afraid to say no, either. One lady offered me a dollar apiece for over a dozen DVDs marked between four and six dollars early on, and acted all shocked and offended when I turned her down. I didn’t have a DVD left at the end of the day.
Attach streamers to your signs. Make it look festive. It helps.
Have a box of free stuff, stuff for kids, little things people might be able to use but that isn’t worth selling.
Oh, and buy a couple of cases of soda and/or water for cheap, have them on ice and sell them for cheap. People appreciate it, and giving them away during the day is a blast.
Some people (myself included) don’t like early birds; they’re skimming the cream of the sale while I’m still working to get it all set up. I heard of a great way to avoid this: “Early Birds Charged Double”. That way if they REALLY want that possibly antique set of andirons then they’re free to pay a premium, but if it’s not worth their money then it’s certainly not worth my time.
Make sure that you have enough change: Go to the bank the night before and get at least $50-$100 dollars in change. Be smart about the change you get, if you have a lot of items under a dollar, then you will need coins. If your most expensive item is more than $50, then you might need a few $20’s. Most of the change you get should be $1’s and $5’s though.
Clean items up and make sure they are in working order- If something doesn’t work, label it as such and expect not make a lot of money on it. Dust everything and clean with those antibacterial wipes. People will spend more money on a nice looking item.
Put things on folding tables or shelves if you can- Hang clothing and put shoes in pairs. Customers are more likely to stay and browse if they don’t have to work to see what you have and if it is higher off the ground like in an actual store.
Have a snack stand- If you have kids or some extra volunteers, think about having a soda or coffee stand and possibly some donuts for sale. Garage sale shopping is hard work, and having snacks on hand is a great way to make a few extra bucks. [Ed: bake sale?]
Make your yard sale a good shopping experience. Set things up like displays in stores. Put like items together, and try to put as much on tables as possible. Use a broom handle to hold clothing on hangers.
Personally, I would rather give an item to a charity for nothing than give it to a garage sale patron who offered me one of the classic “insultingly low prices” - if it’s the difference of a nickel or a dime, I’d rather the charity made money on an item than that I did.
Whatever we don’t sell will go to Goodwill or Interval House (although I think Interval House may be pickier so it would be quicker to take it all to Goodwill).
« Hide the rest
Comment
Here’s a great list of 20 procrastination hacks that are quite useful. The best are the top three:
- Form a Do It Now habit. Procrastination, like many things, is simply a bad habit. By replacing it with a positive habit — the Do It Now (DIFN) habit — you will kick procrastination’s butt. This will require concentrated effort for 30 days, but after that, it should be on autopilot. I put up a sign on my computer that says “DO IT NOW” and every time I feel like procrastinating, I look at the sign and get to work. I’m working on this, and over the past few months I’ve been getting better at it.
- Do Your MIT first. I have a rule that before I check my email or read my feeds, I have to do my Most Important Task first. I do it first thing in the morning, and then no matter what happens after that, I’ve done something very productive today. If you’ve been procrastinating on a very important task for some time, I suggest you do that first. Don’t allow yourself to do anything else until it’s done!
- 10-minute rule. If a task seems overwhelming, tell yourself that you’re only going to do it for 10 minutes. There’s nothing intimidating about 10 minutes. And more often than not, you end up doing more than 10 minutes after that initial hurdle of getting started is overcome.
I can’t remember now where I read this, but my favourite hack is to pick an upcoming task with no firm deadline that’s not really important, and convince myself that it’s both important and urgent. Then I procrastinate on that task by doing other things on my to-do list like reading papers and cleaning my room. It sounds a lot like #20, but slightly modified.
My other two favourite tips are to have an organized boyfriend who guilts you into doing work, and setting up a Firefox add-on like PageAddict. If you can actually see how much time you’re wasting on the Internet (my procrastination method of choice) and have a program that forces you to stop, you’ll do it less.
One comment on #19, though:
Schedule it last-minute. Have an absolute deadline for a task that will take one hour? Schedule it so you don’t actually start on it until about an hour before deadline (well, give yourself a 30-minute cushion). Will a project take 2 days to complete? Schedule it 2 days before deadline. If you have absolutely no padded time in your schedule, you will have no choice but to get a move on.
This is the worst idea I have ever heard. Considering that a) most people who procrastinate are probably a little ADD, and b) most ADD people have serious problems gauging how long things take, scheduling something with a very narrow time cushion is begging, no, screaming for a disaster to occur.
2 Comments
Lifehacker has a thing on 20 ways to manage todos. They also mention Book darts, which sounds pretty neat. A sustainable alternative to post-its, which lose their glue after a while and can’t be reused.
5 Comments
If you’re cooking No Name Parmesan Pesto, boil up an additional batch of pasta (I recommend Conchigle, otherwise known as shell pasta) to mix in with it. Not only does it stretch the pasta and make a giant batch, but it also tames the flavour (which is incredibly salty, in my opinion). Every half package contains 820mg of sodium, so combining it with extra low-sodium pasta means that for the same amount, you can cut that down to 400mg. Which is still crazy, but it’s on the right track. This time I made about as much extra pasta as there was no name pasta, but I think next time I’ll be making twice as much. That dips it down to around 300mg, and there’s still plenty of pesto to cover everything.
Oh my goodness, I just ate a small bowlful and I need to lie down. Boof! That was a lot of pesto. See what I mean?
Comment
Here are some fun things I’ve found in the last few months but never had the time to post a grand missive about them. I haven’t been very entertaining for the last few weeks/months, and I apologize; I almost never, NEVER feel stressed out about school, but I’m actually starting to let it get to me. I was on the verge of a fit, yesterday, so I knit a little bit and that made me feel more relaxed. Still lots of work left to do, so I shall have to construct this post entirely out of cut/paste. No time to think for blogging! My background processes are entirely devoted to backpropagation algorithms in LISP and fretting about how on earth I’m going to get my grad school applications in on time.
But first, brainbar. It is literally the coolest application of EEG in the whole wide world. There is too much I want to write and explore about this. “Brainbar is a mechanical bar that mixes drinks according to the visitor’s brainwaves. The bar reads the brain frequencies (EEG or electroencephalogram) in the alpha and beta wavelength. These wavelengths are generally considered to be synonymous with the states of relaxation and activity in the mind. Thus the BrainBar serves the drink most suited for you, at the moment of measurement. BrainBar can be seen as a mediator or manipulator designed to give a party its perfect state of enhanced socialising, carefully adjusting the drinks served so that every guest stays within acceptable parameters for a “good” behaviour or, if the settings allow, a “bad” behaviour. By the use of alcohol and medical herb essences, the bar can emotionally equalize or polarize the group of guests. This can be seen as a sociological experiment exploring how much a person is prepared to submit to external forces and how far the person can allow a machine to intrude on the body.”
I’m still working on GRE studying and lots of assignments coming up. Here are some good sites for word roots and verbal prep:
Here is my todo list for Sat-Tues, to cross off when it’s finished:
- Read paper for PSYC 490 presentation
- Write up 490 presentation outline
- Testing and Analysis of backprop algorithm
- Do GRE practice exams: [1 / 2]
- Go over GRE essay prompts and think deeply about each one [50 / 100 / 150 / 200]
- Decide on honours thesis
- Work for research supervisor
Read papers for 490 research reportWrite 490 research reportRead over and plan out 490 research reportFinish backpropagation algorithmRead chapter 6 of PSYC 550 bookFind relevant references for 490 presentationDownload GRE book from the internet
Here are my percentile grades from GRE prepping I’ve done so far:
- Arithmetic - 96%
- Algebra - 92%
- Geometry - 87%
- Data Analysis - 63%
- Antonyms - 87%
- Analogies - 90%
- Sentence Completion - 82%
- Reading Passages - 56%
Still more work yet to be done.
« Hide the rest
Comment