Clean Your Way Rich

 

Did I ever tell you how I got started in the doll business? It began with a big clean out. You see, back in 1998 when I was pregnant with our oldest son and we had just bought our first house, Jerry, my husband, was disabled and nearly killed in a work accident. 

The two of us together didn’t even make $40K a year and after the accident we were losing $600 a month Jerry had been making in overtime. I didn’t get paid maternity leave. All of a sudden, I had to come up with thousands of extra dollars every month.

The Internet was brand new and I started freelancing at night after work. I looked into selling on eBay but you had to know how to code to list on the platform back then. I checked HTML and Javascript for Dummies out of the library and taught myself coding. It still took a few years before I found anything that actually sold. 

I am a museum-exhibited fine artist so at first I tried selling my art, but no one was buying. I had just about given up on eBay when I discovered our son’s outgrown clothes and toys would sell on there. Then one summer we went to visit my grandparents and I helped them clean out their closets. 

We found garbage bag full of my mother’s childhood dolls. They were in pieces and we were about the throw them away when my grandpa asked if I wanted to try to fix them. I decided to try and give them to my mom as a birthday present.

I started with her Tiny Betsy McCall doll from 1957. The doll was missing half of one leg and her eyes had fallen back into her head. I got on eBay and started trying to buy a doll with the leg and eyes I needed. Now, these dolls I was bidding on were every bit as broken as my mom’s doll, but I couldn’t get a parts doll because I kept getting outbid. I couldn’t believe how much the broken dolls were selling for ~ like $50 back in around 2000! I wondered how much dolls that weren’t broken were worth and discovered it was a LOT! I decided to teach myself to repair dolls, and the rest is history!

So, why am I telling you this story? Because to this day, if I need some extra money, cleaning my way rich is my go-to. Here’s what to do: pick an area of your home that needs a clean out and tackle one area at a time, like a closet. Go through everything and decide what you do and don’t want to keep. Then look up the sale prices for things you don’t want anymore and see what they are selling for. I guarantee your mind will be blown!

Here are some of the craziest things I’ve sold:

Cleaning the kitchen cupboards: I found an unopened box of Tetly metabolism-boosting tea, now discontinued. I can’t drink it anymore because I gave up caffeine to help my thyroid. It sold for more than $30!

Cleaning the pantry: actually this really wasn’t cleaning, but preventing the need to clean. We got Chinese takeout and I sold the leftover little soy sauce packets that came with our meal and it covered half the cost of the food! Look and see if you have any sauce packets from restaurants. Limited edition sauces especially can sell for big bucks! Think Bojangles sauce, Taco Bell, etc. As far as Chinese condiments go, duck sauce has sold well for me too, but we usually eat all that and rarely have any left over.

Cleaning the car: A few years ago when I was cleaning out our minivan I found a pencil with a troll topper from the Trolls movie and another troll topper without the pencil. These were fast food kid meal toys. I listed them online and the pencil and topper sold for about $20 and the topper without the pencil sold for $13! 

Cleaning the bathroom: going through the bathroom drawers I came across an Old Spice deodorant I mistakenly bought for my husband (he wanted the antiperspirant). It was unused and the scent has been discontinued. It sold for $25!

Cleaning the toy box: my daughter had a Leap tablet or phone or something like that which broke. I found the stylus that came with it and sold it for $15. Just the other day I sold one single Barbie doll hanger for $20 because it’s a vintage, discontinued item. One of my son’s Transformers (now considered “vintage” because I’m so old I guess) sold for $80!

Cleaning the dogs: okay, drumroll please for the craziest thing I ever sold… dog hair! That’s right. Dog Hair. After I brush our very fluffy dogs I always have mountains of fur. When I was in college I had a textiles class where we had to spin yarn from pet hair. Remembering that, I cleaned the hair and bagged it up in sandwich size zip bags. I sold each one for $8 plus shipping! I SOLD OUT of bagged dog hair on Etsy! I advertised them as for doll hair, needle felting and spinning yarn. And guess what? They all went to my alma mater’s town. I guess that professor is still assigning the pat hair project! I need to do that again; our dogs really do need to be brushed! All together I made over $100 selling dog hair on Etsy after just one grooming.

Another great thing about the clean out method is you will find a lot of things that aren’t worth selling but fine to donate, so you will provide value to your community with your donations. 

So, if you need some cash, here’s my challenge: do a big clean out (or multiple clean outs) and start selling online. I sell on eBay, Etsy, Mercari, Poshmark, and Amazon and I consign women’s and kid’s clothes to ThredUP. See what all YOU can sell. Then message me at ateliermandaline@gmail.com or tell me in the comments what you sold and how much you made. Let’s see if anyone can beat my craziest sale!

And if you join my 2025 Income Kickstart waitlist you’ll get my 100 Ways to Make Your First $500 Online ebook for free. Just click here to register.