Breakups don’t just saddle us with emotional baggage—they leave us with unwanted physical stuff, too. Saying goodbye to a significant other often means saying hello to a pile of well-worn cliches: A frayed box piled with mementos you can’t bear to sift through; a garage sale peddling expensive keepsakes for $1 a piece; a never-used wedding dress gathering dust in the closet.
Thanks to a new startup, Never Liked It Anyway, post-relationship closet cleansing can be productive—and eco-friendly. The site’s owner, Bella, came up with the idea when she found herself in possession of a useless plane ticket after a pre-Christmas breakup. Using a simple WordPress site and no additional funding, she crafted a sort of eBay-meets-support-group where users can sell items of sentimental value at a “break-up” price and vent on the Internet while they’re at it.
A “Silver Heart Necklace Charm – perfect condition unlike his heart!” is available for the bargain price of $35. A burned bride-to-be, who is peddling her $800 wedding gown for $250, has titled her post “I hope you’re luckier than me.” Buyers can find anything from furniture to concert tickets to necklaces—all at a deep discount and labeled by item category and “break-up phase.” There is even a companion blog called The Juice, where the dumped can spill their tales of “spending sprees and selling frenzies,” or learn to cope with a helpful Moving On manuel.
Everyone wins: The heartbroken purge their past and get some consolation cash to line their pockets. The broke get good deals and interesting (if excruciating) stories behind their finds. So before you burn that mixtape, consider recycling it instead. There are plenty of buyers out there who can still bear to listen to “your song.”
