LIVING TOGETHER DIARY 2

Long live Marktplaats. Or not?

I already told you last time that all our items listed on Marktplaats were sold very quickly. Super nice and I got the hang of it, so I even started looking around my house with the thought: “Hmmm, what else can I sell?”.

I made appointments with the buyers for when the items could be picked up. I thought I was quite clever, as I scheduled everything for the same date that the new stove was coming, and the plasterer was working; that way, the big furniture would be gone right away.

The amounts had already been agreed upon, so I added everything up that would be in the pot and started shopping for a new interior. That money would come back later when the items were picked up. What do you think? Some guy “vgm” who was supposed to pick up the dryer didn’t get back to me. The lady buying the couch came, but after seeing the couch, she thought it was too big. I even said: “Oh, you can just try it at home?” To which I got the reply: “I’d love to try it, sweetheart, but then I can’t get MY living room door open.” Ah, that seemed inconvenient, yes. The person who really wanted the gas stove emailed in the afternoon: ‘Sorry, I just woke up, I’m not coming to pick it up today’ and another one named Kxrlwyjs didn’t want to buy my scooter after all, because he thought it was too red, he texted. OKAY.

So there we were. In a house full of old stuff, new stuff, a plasterer, so a thousand kilos of dust and a bank account in the negative.

Wise lesson? If you sell something on Marktplaats, write in your ad: Pick up today, special price, the coffee is ready! Seriously, we put the items back online and within a few hours everything was picked up. You just have to put a little effort into the texts for the ads. Like: ‘Attention! Nap danger on this couch’ and for the little stove, I wrote: ‘It’s really time for me to buy a grown-up stove, who will free me from this incredibly cute little device?’ It worked well, because by the end of the day, everything we wanted to sell was gone and the pot was filled again. I even waved goodbye to my scooter to Gouda.

We high-fived in the evening because we had succeeded, but I still want to talk about the “pickup”. It’s always a bit exciting who rings the bell and whether you won’t immediately get a bang on your head and that your dryer gets taken away without payment. We had happiness, because only nice new owners came by. There were many heavy items and everything had to go down from the third floor. That went through the window with complicated ropes and some appliances were also transported through a narrow staircase.

All nice and well and everything went okay, but I found it a bit uncomfortable. Why? Because as a woman, you feel incredibly insignificant at that moment. Look, I’m happy to help give that couch a push over the balcony, but actually, I’d rather not. You doubt your own strength, whether you can hold such a thing back, so you might prefer not to help. And besides that; getting a large cabinet down the stairs properly with all those slanted and weird turns, I’m just not good at. So what do you do then? You stand by and watch. Sometimes you briefly put your hand on it because you think that helps, but it really doesn’t make sense. “Good job, guys” or: “Yes, yes, yes, yes” was actually the only thing I could say.

To be continued…

Tip: Suppose you sell heavy items and you don’t live on the ground floor, then you always have to ask if the buyer is coming with multiple people to help carry. Especially if you don’t have a man in the house.