eBay vs Charity shop

I was clearing the spare room today trying to find space for all my new Christmas presents, throwing everything I no longer wanted into bags ready for the charity shop. Whenever I do this I always debate in my head whether I should sell some of the stuff on eBay, but the charity shop always wins as I am too lazy to list everything on eBay. So with my renewed motivation for all things money making this time I decided to give eBay a go.

I had 7 shirts (many still in their packaging), 2 jumpers,  one jacket, 3 computer games and a CD that was purchased 2 years ago as a present for someone but never actually given! So I took photos of everything and then sat down to write all the listings.

Two hours later and I was regretting not taking this stuff to the charity shop. Writing descriptions of everything is boring and time consuming. I’m sure there are people out there who find this fun but I am not one of them.

And to make things worse sitting there staring blankly at a computer screen I couldn’t stop the guilty feelings that I was depriving some charity due to my greed to make a couple of pounds. I did a quick bit of research on the Internet and discovered that my fears were well founded. According to this article in the Telegraph many charities have seen revenue drop by a tenth in their shops. So I am left wondering whether what I am doing is morally right.

If you have never used eBay before then there is an excellent guide here: http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/ebayexplained/index.html