Coming Soon: Everything Must Go

I’m not sure of the timing, or even exactly what I’ll be parting with, but sometime in the coming weeks I’m going to hold an “Everything Must Go” event in which I’ll sell and give away phones and other gadgets.

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. As you might imagine—actually even more than you can imagine—things just pile up here at Chez Thurrott, as I buy an astonishing amount of hardware so I can keep up with what’s going on. And then much of it just sits there, barely used. For months. And then sometimes for years.

Like many of you, I have a system of passing used tech products to family members and friends as they are replaced with something newer. I guess the difference is just the sheer amount of stuff that piles up here. So I try to do these “Everything Must Go” events every once in while. The thing is, they’re time consuming and difficult, and the time kind of drags on between each. But I’m almost ready.

There’s a lot of prep work. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been slowly—and, more recently, not so slowly—separating out boxes in the cellar so I can put them together (when possible) with the device and other accessories that belong to them. Over the past week or so, this has picked up a lot, and if I wasn’t going to San Francisco on Tuesday, I’d probably be ready to figure this out sooner.

I’m still not sure exactly how I’m going to do this. When I look at the stuff that’s been building up in my home office and in the unfinished part of the cellar, it basically falls into one of three categories: Stuff to throw out, stuff to sell, and stuff to give away.

I have already thrown away a lot of stuff, and this is really fulfilling since this process is part of a broader and longer-term “minimalism” scheme I’m working towards. This is redundant cables and the like, boxes for products that are long gone or will never be reused, and so on.

The stuff I’ll be selling is a short list, and it’s not clear yet if that stuff will be part of the “Everything Must Go” event you’ll see here soon. Basically, I will only sell things I’ve actually purchased with my own money, and then only those things that are new(ish) and actually valuable.

The giveaways are the biggest group. It’s comprised of things that will be part of “Everything Must Go” and some other things I will donate locally.

I want to be really clear about this. I will not make money doing from “Everything Must Go.”

All I’ll be asking is that people pay for the shipping required to get the stuff to them. The goal isn’t profit, it’s to clean house, minimize the amount of stuff that’s been piling up, and to hopefully get useful devices into the hands of people who will actually use them.

Since I’ve been posting some photos of this stuff on Twitter recently, I’ve had a few requests about which devices I’ll be giving away, and even some requests for specific devices. I can’t really accommodate either, sorry. And it’s fair to say that I’ve taken photos of a few devices that won’t show up in “Everything Must Go”, because I’ll be getting rid them otherwise. And that many, many devices you’ve not yet seen will be available in the event.

I’ve also had questions from people outside the United States. I don’t want to exclude anyone, but I think the cost of international shipping will exceed the value of many of the things I will be giving away, so I’m not sure that makes any sense. (If you think otherwise, let me know.)

Sorry if this is cryptic. Basically, I’m going to be gone for the next week, but when I get back I’ll try to finish up putting everything together and figure out the best way to get do the event. Some form of random selection for each device, or whatever. And then you can help me clean my house. 🙂 And I can try to keep that it way.

More soon.