How To Create A Facebook Destash Group

 I'm getting to be "that age" where many people start thinking about downsizing their possessions and their homes.

This is what too much studio stuff looks like:

My husband and I have our names on a waiting list for a nearby retirement community and we've been sorting through nearly 40 years of stuff and tossing or giving away a lot of it.  I've been making jewelry nearly all of my adult life and my studio is overflowing.  I must destash or we will never be able to move.  My husband jokes that perhaps we should keep our current house for a studio and move to a smaller home to live in!

Its not just that I'm a messy creative, its also that there is no place left to put things, so it just accumulates on every horizontal surface.  In our new home, I won't even have a separate room for a studio, so where will I put all this debris then?

So I've set up a destash group on Facebook.  Its working quite well, so I thought I'd share some tips for success, in case your bead stash needs thinning out too. 

 First take a look at the Facebook selling groups you already belong to. If they are well run, study their policies and rules.  For example, I belong to the Ceramic Art Bead Market on Facebook.  This group has nothing to do with destash.  They sell ceramic artisan beads and pendants. The group is well managed and has been quite successful.  I studied their policies and thought about what would be applicable to my destash group.  In a like manner, I studied policies from a lampwork selling group and a couple of destash groups, then I formulated my policies to create guidelines for the way I wanted my own group to be run.

Your policies must include how you want your members to let you know that they want to buy something, how they will be billed and how they will pay you. Your shipping policies must be clear.  How much will you charge for different weights?  Will you combine shipping?  How long after payment will it be until you ship? You must include if you expect payment within 24 or 48 hours of receiving the invoice and what will happen if they don't follow through with payment in a timely manner. I recommend that you also include language that addresses polite discourse in the group and what will happen if a member self promotes, spams or treats others disrespectfully.  Its best to address these issues upfront.  Its much harder, if not impossible, to restore a friendly atmosphere once it has been damaged.

I looked over my calender of commitments and decided that I would hold my destash sales on Wednesday's only, as that was my least busy day. This gives me a week in between sales to take care of invoices, shipping and photographing items for the next week's sales.  This works very well for me, but other groups have more or less continuous destash going on.  You have to think about what will work for you.

I've decided to just write the price on a piece of paper and put it in the photograph.  This saves me typing time, when I'm listing items.  Not elegant, or sophisticated, but it works and is easy.  I generally try to record the price per bead whenever I make a purchase, and this has enabled me to state what the retail price was and what I'm offering the items for.  Members can see that they are getting an awesome deal by being a part of this group.  I'm intentionally pricing things low, because my primary objective is to move things out of my studio.  Getting reimbursed for doing so is nice, but it is secondary for me.  I include a penny in the picture for size reference.

I start my sales at 3:30 PST and list about 15 sets of beads and pendants.  Last week the sale was over by about 5:00 pm PST.  When someone claims an item, I always be sure to thank them, then I edit the original listing wording to say "SOLD to (name)".

Later the same evening, I send out invoices through PayPal.  Once an item is paid for, I "hide" the picture on Facebook, so it is easy to see what is still available for sale, without having to wade through all the pictures of sold items.  I ship out items by Saturday or earlier and then I start the whole process over again.

Like any online selling, you have to do promotion or all this work will be for nothing.  I started off by personally inviting about 5 of my friends, just to get the group started.  Then I posted links on my timeline, my business page and on all the Facebook jewelry groups I belong to.  I included a picture and wrote:

Linda is destashing her bead supply in preparation for moving to a smaller home. Want some great deals on 30 years worth of beads? Follow this link and then ask to join! https://www.facebook.com/groups/1438318213129493/

Shortly before my first destash sale I made a collage, like the one below and included a link to my group. I posted this all over Facebook, as well.

 For the 2nd sale, I made another announcement, with the same wording, but new pictures.  I plan to have new preview pictures every week, to help build interest and anticipation.

 I'm excited about this group and it makes me happy to know that my extra beads are going to people who will put them to good use, making the world a little bit more lovely.

Linda Landig  
Linda Landig Jewelry

Finding Space to Make Jewelry in a Tiny Home

My boyfriend and I live in a 625 sq. ft. house. (Some may consider it a shack, but it has forced air natural gas heat and picture windows, which I think qualifies it as a house.) It is a perfect square. It even has a flat roof.

The Shack (with sailboat detail because we live in the mountains)

Open plan kitchen/living area in the north half of the square, bedroom-bathroom-bedroom in the south half of the square. No outbuildings, no attic, no basement.

There is very little built-in storage: a small walk-through closet between the bedrooms and some kitchen cabinets and drawers. That's it. We do have a storage unit a couple miles away where we keep off-season items like lawnmowers and bicycles. Consequently, I eke out storage wherever I can, being sure to use furniture with storage features and not leaving dead space unfilled. I also want our house to look and feel like a home, so I try to pay attention to keeping everything attractive and neat.

Storage:

Kitchen cabinets and drawers:

This house is where I store most of my jewelry supplies, and do most of my jewelry work. I admit if I were going to make large amounts of jewelry for sale, for a living, this house wouldn't work as both a home and a workplace. Although if I lived alone I could commandeer the whole house for jewelry crap without making anyone else miserable. So this post is really for hobbyists living in a small space. With someone else.

I have four small shelving units around the house--two in the living room, one in the kitchen and one in the second bedroom. This one in the living room holds tools and baskets of toxic chemicals (patinas mostly).

I also got rid of an old hope chest because it was too hard to get into (the top opened like a coffin lid, and the 100-pound television, DVR, DVD player, accompanying cables and assorted houseplants and knick knacks sitting on it made it useless for storage) and replaced it with an entertainment unit with shelves inside and sliding doors that is now full of jewelry boxes, cording, scavenged bubble wrap, photo props and tools I am too scared to use.

I keep additional photo props (like fabric squares and picture frames) in the end tables in the living room.

I buy my jewelry boxes by the gross from Paper Mart, and I can only fit some of them in the entertainment unit. I keep the rest in my car, in the trunk and the back seat. I also keep other shipping boxes in my trunk. I rarely need to carry people or other items or animals so it works fine.

This other bookcase holds wire and sheet, more tools, and various other crap. My sheet and wire used to just sit in the corner in bags and baskets on the floor. I'm thinking of getting more baskets to hold the spools of wire so it will look nicer.

I used to sit on the couch and use a coffee table as my workbench, but I found myself leaning over way too much and it was ruining my back, so I got rid of the coffee table and replaced it with a storage ottoman where I keep greeting cards and extra tissue paper. I use it for a footstool when I'm watching TV now. I don't work on the couch anymore, I use it purely for relaxation.

I traded in the coffee table for a little table from the kitchen. This table is my only work area now (except for sometimes the floor--see below). If I need an extra surface to put things while I work, I can bust out a TV tray. But I put my things, and the TV tray, away when I'm done because I like the living room to look nice.

I tucked a baker's rack underneath the protruding end of a countertop--I keep a lot of beads and findings in there. This used to be unused space. I'm thinking of making a little curtain for it, because the plastic containers are ugly.

The books that were on a bookshelf in the second bedroom were banished to the storage unit and replaced with beads and little plastic storage boxes where I keep finished jewelry.

I keep some shipping supplies in the second bedroom in or near the computer desk--tissue paper, bubble mailers, ribbon, business cards and washi tape. My postage scale is in here too. This is where I do my shipping, on the pullout tray of my computer desk. And on the chair. This wouldn't be feasible of course if I shipped a lot of stuff--right now it's only a few items a month, so no big deal.

I use the tumbler in the bedroom, because it's noisy. (The tumbler I mean, not the bedroom.) If I close both bedroom doors, then we can't even hear it in the living room. I have on occasion put a cardboard box over it to dampen the sound further. (I won't go into all the stuff stored under the bed.)

I do my torching (annealing and making headpins) on top of the chest freezer by the front door. We don't really use it anymore (the freezer I mean, not the front door. We use that all the time.) The freezer has been empty for ages (the boyfriend has been unlucky the last few hunting trips) so that's not a problem.

I do my LOS'ing on the front porch so as not to stink up the house. In the winter this is a drag.

I use a TV tray for taking pictures of my jewelry by the window. I always take my pictures here. Unfortunately I'm away from home during the daylight hours in the winter, so this means I can only take pictures on the weekends in the winter. Which is no big deal because I make such small quantities of jewelry, and I only do it for fun. Otherwise I'd starve.

I still do a lot of hammering on the floor--when I'm doing heavy stuff like embossing metals or cutting discs, it's just much quieter hammering on the floor. I put down a square of scrap wood and get it done. Unfortunately this is hard on my back, but I don't spend a lot of time doing this kind of work so it's all right.

I keep this scrap wood, along with my ceramic and stone tiles for photography, leaning against the refrigerator next to a fabulous chair my mom gave me. There's some tiles and stuff behind the chair too. I'm thinking of looking for an oval galvanized tub or something to put the tiles in so they look better, or maybe a really big magazine rack.

I also keep some things under and behind the couch.

I am thinking of getting rid of some of our wall art in the kitchen and replacing it with some kind of wall storage system to hang kitchen things, which would free up cupboard space so we could maybe get some kitchen stuff off the countertops. Then eventually one day maybe there would be room on the countertop for a kiln or a rolling mill. (Just thinking ahead.)

Apartment Therapy also has really great ideas for increasing storage in a small living area. Check it out!

Keirsten