the value of space
As I slowly work through the things I own, I have found that many of them have met their purpose and no longer need to occupy a place in my home. There are then a few different things I can choose to do with them. I can throw them away, give them away, or try and sell them. Often, when the item is still perfectly serviceable, in whatever way that might be, I will decide to sell it. And when I sell this thing, I am faced with a question - how much is it worth?
I recently listed a pair of shoes on an online marketplace. The shoes were worn perhaps a handful of times. Although I still liked them, it turned out that I didn't have much occasion to wear them, and they soon fell out of regular use. They did, however, occupy a space - in a shoe box under the bed - in my home. I listed them for an average price - not particularly cheap or expensive, just somewhere in the middle. When I received a lower offer for them, I quickly declined. Later, I wondered if I had made the right choice.
I declined the offer based on an intuitive idea of the item's value. The shoes were probably more than double the listing price when I bought them. It seemed obvious that I should take as much as I could for them. Otherwise, it would feel like I'd lost money. But after some reflection, I realised that the decision was a kind of automatic response. I was playing out a principle of the market without thinking.
In fact, I had already absorbed the cost of the shoes a long time ago - I had little need to recoup the expense. What I really wanted from the exchange was actually something quite different. I'd hoped that the shoes could be valuable to someone else and I would see them go to a good home. But most of all, I wanted the space that they took up in my home to be freed again. Negative space, it turns out, makes a difference. Emptiness has a value of its own. And in this case, that space was worth more than the maximum price I might be able to sell the shoes for.
A little cash back would be nice, but a room clear of clutter and noise? Priceless.