Considering leaving the hobby/selling supplies

I generally donate what I'm getting rid of but some ideas...

do you have friends or neighbours who craft and might be interested in some of it?

Have a yard sale and advertise the big categories (scrapbooking, dies, rubber stamps, any machines...)

If you're still lucky enough to have an LSS, they may host a yard sale (but sometimes the proceeds are in store credit - so check on that)

Facebook marketplace or FB buy/sell/trade groups

There's a buy/sell/trade board here - works best for things that can be easily mailed so not die cutting machines or the like

You might find that if you can weed out your stash, you may find interest in crafting again - sometimes having too much is overwhelming and kills the creativity


Places I've gotten supplies from destashers - yard sales, flea markets, the BST board here, and of course, from friends

I agree with the folks above me - it takes a LOT of time and patience. More than you can imagine. But it can be done. And you can make progress in small bursts of time! Everything you can get out of the house will make life easier for Future-You.

My advice (based on Dana K White's methods)
- start looking around and seeing if there's any obvious trash that can be thrown away. Packaging inserts, broken stuff. There is always some trash.
- look around and see if there's anything you want to keep that already has a place to live in your house - maybe scissors or stuff that is just randomly mixed in with scrappy stuff and needs to get put away. If there's a mess there's usually some stuff that just needs to be taken to its home or to the recycling bin. Take it all the way there right away so it's done and finished.

At this point you've made some progress without getting into the hard stuff.
- is there anything obvious you can donate or give away? Try to get donations out of your house before you start sifting through the small stuff. Getting big things out will make more progress faster and keep you motivated.

Then
- are there any things you want to sell that are worth more than $25-50 individually, like tools or furniture? If you go through the process of selling those you'll get to know how selling works in your area (start with Marketplace, maybe Craigslist) and you can see if it's worth selling some of the smaller stuff. Don't start looking at individual papers and stamps at this point or you'll probably get totally overwhelmed.
- start selling things that are with a bigger payoff/value because even those take a lot of effort. You'll learn about the process and pitfalls so you can be more realistic about the value of selling smaller items later. Is an hour of photographing, listing, answering questions, finding a box, printing a label, etc etc worth it for a $5 stamp set for you? You'll know better once you try it out for real.

once you're making some progress
- can you group things into bulk lots to sell locally?
- try selling some good stuff people covet on the For Sale boards here - you need a certain number of posts to see it.
- or would you rather just get it out and be done at this point? If you haven't had much luck selling you might be ready to drop it off at the donation center and call it quits. But don't worry about how that's going to look/feel at the beginning.

Number one tip - don't start with the things you're agonizing over, the stuff that makes you say "ugh, there's no way I can get rid of this!" Once you work through the process and reach a certain point you can deal with harder stuff. Start with the face-palm, broken, trashed, ugly, or otherwise easy stuff.

You can do it

Some wonderful advice above on how to destash. I have definitely been in that mind set of wanting it all gone and have pretty much done a full destash. I found bulk lots on a local selling page with a $1 reserve allowed the market to dictate the price. I was not disappointed with any of the final bids, plus the stuff was GONE. Good luck with whatever you decide.

I've sold lots of stuff via Facebook scrappy sales groups. And what everyone else has said, it takes time and effort but if you're not wanting to donate stuff this is a good route to go. I usually go through ISO's in the facebook groups and see if any of the stuff I'm selling would fulfill one of those. I sometimes do lots but most groups won't allow you to do mystery lots, you have to have a clear photo of things you're selling in the lot. I reuse bubble wrap mailers as much as I can to keep the "handling" costs down and also reuse boxes. I use Pirateship to ship because they have a volume discount from USPS and UPS.

Good luck with whatever you decide!