I made a mistake with my crystal punch bowl.
It didn’t sell. I wrote about that this fall, the week my granddaughter helped me list things for sale. Twelve little cups, used maybe three times in forty years, and not one person wanted it.
So I followed my own rule. After a week, it was supposed to go into the donation tote in my laundry room.
It didn’t. It went into the corner of the laundry room, right next to the tote.
And there it sat for two months.
It was too nice to give away to just anyone. It was too big to keep in the cabinet.
And I couldn’t sell it. Every time I did a load of laundry, I looked at that box and felt a little heavier.
Then a few other things joined it. An electric roaster oven, a brass floor lamp, a box of good picture frames. My “stuck pile” was growing, and I didn’t know what to do with things I couldn’t sell.
What finally worked was a simple 24-hour rule. This is how it works, and where every one of those things ended up.
Why Good Things Get Stuck
The stuck pile isn’t about the things. It’s about three feelings that all show up at once.
The first is money.
I paid good money for that roaster. Letting it go for nothing felt like throwing that money away. (I wrote more about this feeling in my post on