20 MPDC 6/7/11

Wednesday 6/1/11
Nothing

Thursday 6/2/11
I priced things for 15 minutes tonight and made it through all the books on the bookshelf.

Friday 6/3/11
I made it through most of my chore list, but didn’t get to this.

Saturday 6/4/11
Due to yesterday’s neglect, I priced for 15 minutes today and have finished pricing everything in the bookshelf area.

Sunday 6/5/11
Nothing

Monday 6/6/11
Nothing

Tuesday 6/7/11
I rallied today and priced kitchen items for 15 minutes. I have a lot of kitchen items that fall into the category “use about once every year or two, but are so, so handy when I do use them, I just can’t get rid of them right now.” So there wasn’t much to price.

And with that, June busied itself up to a frothy state and I did no more 20MPDC. Alas. Another good idea gone by the wayside.

20MPDC 5/31/11

Wednesday 5/25
Pricing happened. In the meantime I contemplated various garage sale logistics. Tables? Where will I get them? Also, there will be a lot of clothing and I need to display it in a way that people actually look through the clothing. I want it all hanging. How will I accomplish that? These are things for the brain to work on between now and the sale.

Thursday 5/26
More pricing. I’ve got the shelf cleared off, except for the e-waste which I will take to the recycler this weekend, no foolin’. I haven’t yet passed out any of my harvest helper flyers, because I’m busy debating two things: is it too early? and, should I pass them out to everyone, or just people I can see have gardens?

Friday 5/27
Made it through the drawer in the dresser in the front room. Tomorrow I tackle the bookshelves.

Saturday 5/28
Bike ride sapped all energy.

Sunday 5/29
Overscheduled this day.

Monday 5/31
Overscheduled this day also

Tuesday 6/1
Work then volunteering then work again sunk this day. Better luck next week.

20MPDC 5/24/11

Wednesday 5/18
Nothing

Thursday, 5/19
I spent 15 minutes continuing to rue the fact that I decided to make a web site in WordPress, rather than Blogger. It looks prettier, but I could have been done with this two weeks ago. WordPress is not intuitive. It’s not even understandable when I’m looking at the help screen instructions. Today I manged to get a picture uploaded (yay!) and then spent the rest of the time trying to turn off comments and make a category. It’s getting close to done, though.

Friday 5/20
Two days of 20MPDC in a row! Today I finished the blog and finished the quarter sheet flyers to pass out. Next I will make a “tear off” poster to hang up in a few places.

Saturday 5/21
Nothing

Sunday 5/22
I printed out my Harvest Helper flyers and sliced them up. They are ready for distribution.

Monday 5/23
Starting tomorrow I will pass out my Harvest Helper fliers on my morning walk. I’ve now moved on to garage sale 20MPDC. I’ve picked my tentative date (July 9) and today I labeled items for sale. I also straightened my storage shed to better hold items for sale after I label them. I’m pricing everything very cheap (mostly $1.00 or under, a lot of the stuff I priced today was 25 to 50 cents) so that it will be bought and taken away from me. I’ve been to garage sales lately and everyone seems to have an overinflated sense of their items worth. For instance, at a sale I went to recently they had a nice vintage metal cooler. Very retro cool. But priced at $75.00? At a garage sale? I think not. Maybe in a vintage store placed in a very yuppie part of town. But not at a garage sale.

So from now until July 9 I will be decluttering and pricing things for a garage sale at the same time.

Tuesday 5/24
15 minutes of pricing everything that has been sitting by the front door, waiting to go to the Goodwill. I had a realization in the middle of the night. I’ve been looking for a metal shelf on which I can set the seed starts. I want to pay less than $10.00 for one. It turns out, I have a metal shelf already. It sits by the front door and collects things that rarely, if ever, get taken to Goodwill. That’s not a good focal point for the living room/front area. So I will price everything on it for the sale, store the items in the storage closet for the sale and move the shelf outside to hold the seed starts. Brilliant!

20MPDC 5/17/11

Well, I reported something this week, but blogger chose to roll back things to Wednesday, thus erasing the hours of work on the blog I did on Thursday. I am not at all happy with blogger at this moment.

Thursday 5/12/11
I did work today but blogger erased it.

Friday 5/13/11
Nothing

Saturday 5/14/11
Nothing

Sunday 5/15/11
Nothing.

Monday 5/16/11
I spent half of the time choosing a photo for the “about” page on the harvest helper site. Then I spent the rest of the time unsuccessfully loading the photo onto the site. Why did I think doing this in wordpress would be a good idea? I do not find wordpress user friendly AT ALL. I will try again tomorrow.

Tuesday 5/17/11
Nothing

20MPDC 5/10/11

Tuesday 5/10/11

You would probably guess by the lack of posts this week, but I’ve been very conflicted about the 20MPDC. I haven’t been doing anything, as the lack of reporting (none this week) attests. Should I throw in the towel? Switch my focus? Pretend I never embarked on this journey?

Here’s what I’ve decided to do:
Knife sharpening. On hold until I save up enough money to get some equipment.

Craigslist posting. I’ve been holding steady at $8.00 worth of sales for a month now. I’m going to set this aside and then come back to it at the end of May. Then things will be priced to go. I’ve also been contemplating having a garage sale instead of posting each item for very cheap individually.

Harvest Helper. This is what I’m putting my main effort into. I want to have the blog done by the end of this month and start handing out the flyers in early June.

20 minutes. I set my timer for 20 minutes, then it goes off and then I still have to post, making this an event longer than 20 minutes. I will set my timer for 15 minutes, then spend five minutes reporting the day’s efforts.

20MPDC 5/3/11

Oh dear, I’ve done nothing until today, May 3. I’ve gotten in a slump with the daily routines and so the 20MPDC has fallen to the wayside with the rest of them. But here I am, crawling out of the wayside back to the thoroughfare.

Tuesday, May 3
I took another picture of items I wish to sell on Craigslist. I reposted all of my expired, unsold posts reducing the price of all but one of them. I found the WordPress site (I had bookmarked it last time) and then had trouble figuring out how to sign in. My goal is to have the blog finished by the end of the month so I can reference it on the flyers which I will hand out beginning at the end of this month also.

20MPDC 4/26/11

Thursday 4/21
There has not been a lot of 20MPD motivation this week and I am starting to get the “this is dumb, I’m going to drop it” feeling. But I manged to rally today. I posted a new item on Craigslist and re-posted three other items that had expired without selling. If you are interested in 3/4 of a box of slug and snail repellant for $1.00, I’m your lady right now. I need to decide how many times to re-post something before moving it over to the free section. Right now one re-post feels okay, I’ll check in again if the items don’t sell this time around.

I went back to my Harvest Helper wordpress site and mucked around with my remaining time. It feels really different than blogger and is very confusing now, but I will keep exploring.

Monday 4/25.
The weekend did not bring a lot of 20MPDC motivation, either. So here I am on Monday. Today I posted another item on Craigslist. All my re-posts and Thursday’s new post haven’t had any bites. I spent the rest of the time reading about WordPress blogs for the Harvest Helper site. It’s becoming a bit more comfortable.

20MPDC Check in 4/19/11

4/13 and 4/14 were eaten up with gardening.

4/15. Spent more time reading about knife sharpeners. I didn’t put anything on Craigslist because I’m out of town for a day. I did have a nibble on an item, which if followed through (only an “if” for Craigslist as people are flaky) I will have an extra $5.00.

4/16 Craigslist guy did come thorough and I’m $5.00 richer. I now have grossed $8.00 which is nearly one first-run matinee movie. Or two second-run movies plus a box of Jr. Mints. But more importantly, it’s a tiny step toward the knife sharpening gear I need to implement the knife sharpening business.

4/17, 4/18 & 4/19. Apparently busy with other things.

20MPDC 4/12/11

Wednesday 4/6/11
Evening meeting left me with little time, certainly not 20 minutes. I took a picture of an item to put on Craigslist and that was it.

Thursday 4/7/11
I posted an item to Craigslist and took a picture of another item. I spent the rest of the time reading tutorials on SharpeningSupplies.com and I watched a video. The tiny amount of research I’ve done over the past few weeks has me confident that I can learn how to sharpen knives.

Friday/Saturday 4/8-9
Nothin!

Sunday 4/10/11
I took another picture and posted another ad on Criagslist. I edited my Harvest Helper flyer and watched a few sharpening videos. I want to purchase a stone set, but I am resisting until I do more research.

Monday 4/11/11
Picture? Taken. Item? Posted. Harvest Helper? New blog created. WordPress explored a bit.

20MPDC Check in 4/5/11

3/29. Finished blog post about 20MPDC. With the minute remaining, googled “how to be a professional knife sharpener” and discovered that more people search “how to be a professional knife thrower” than “knife sharpener.”

3/30. Made flyer for harvesting business. Not sure of a good name for the business. Am letting it marinate. Read up on knife sharpening on a web site and found another good source of information and supplies (which are not cheap!). Briefly contemplated taking a picture of items for sale and rejected that idea.

3/31. Took pictures of five things to sell on Craig’s List. Will upload the photos with the usual weekly photo upload. Spent 11 minutes reading about knife sharpening. The Paper Wheel system seems in my price range. Will keep reading.

4/1. Spent the entire time reading about knife sharpening. I learned to fold a paper corner to show me the primary edge face and the secondary edge face. April and May will be used to read about sharpening so that I will have a good idea of what would be the best investment of my money.

4/2, 4/3 Busy with other things

4/4. Forgot to write down what I did, but if memory serves, posted an item to Craigslist and spent the rest of the time doing something that I cannot recall. Ah, it’s coming back to me now. I was looking for a detail map of the Kenton neighborhood and got distracted on the library web site.

4/5. Sold item on Craigslist and am now $3.00 richer! What an excellent boost of confidence for this project! I have decided to take a picture of something to sell every day and post something to sell every day. I posted a new item and spent some time reading Leonard Lee’s Complete Guide to Sharpening. I read the chapter on kitchen knife sharpening. Leonard Lee is pretty funny and reassured me that sharpening kitchen knives is easy! Example: “Most kitchen-knife users seem to be satisfied with the condition of the knife as long as the cutting edge is keener than the back of the knife. The tolerance for dull knives is amazingly high in most kitchens.”

In the few minutes remaining. I checked out WordPress as I am thinking about having a web site for my harvesting business.

Well done, me!