Happily thinning out the herd of projects
 

It all started with putting up the big Schwinn World frame with a bent fork and I started moving stuff out of the house.

One of the people that responded to the Schwinn CL ad has a business rebuilding bikes so I sold him a Sears tandem, a Shogun road frame and a Trek 830 frame that was damaged. It was hilarious that all of that fit in in a 2 door Honda civic. LOL

Next I put up 3 schwinn Varsity frames and a Supersport frame on CL and in a few minutes one of the flippers called wating the lot. He was also interested in the one of the other frames I posted...

I put up 3 more frames on CL 2 road bikes and a 3-speed frame. I put them up cheap enough I think I will have buyers.

Next I had some kids bikes some complete some in pieces I donated to the local bike charity. I talked to one of the guys there and I can gets some nice projects from them as-is for great prices. I have bought a couple projects there in the past and often pay more than they ask. I'll be donating more bikes tomorrow.

Overall I am excited to be getting a little cash and cleaning out things so I can possibly walk around in my garage and basement without injuring myself. I can also have better space to work on the bikes I have. I still have plenty of projects to do, but I see a tidy bike area and some fun projects ahead. Having some room means I could bring in something new I actually will be excited about instead of dreading. My wife is going to be very happy with all these bikes leaving the house. =) I plan get to the place that the show Hoarders wouldn't want to film here.

I just wanted to share the joy of purging. I think in the future I can pick the projects I do more carefully and enjoy them much more. That Bike charity (Mad Dads) had all kinds of sweet bikes I would like to have or at least work on. They have hundreds of bikes. I may begin to volunteer there once a month as they can use the help. I am also probably going to be offing up some stuff on the pay it forward thread in the future.

= fatal error. You'll have a much harder time parting with bikes that you like!

I kind of like having several bike projects going on at once. It can get hectic keeping all the balls in the air, but it's a fun mental exercise.

That's very admirable that you want to volunteer at the bike charity, I have a friend that was the head mechanic at the local REI who recently quit to work full time at a bikes-for-kids charity. That guy has a HUGE heart and says he loves every minute of it.

I did a frame-athon several weeks back, as I had a stack of decent donor frames, where I did not plan to build them up. Moved them to new homes pretty quickly.

Do you mind sharing what you got for the Varsity/Continental project bikes? I have several in the queue, and am thinking about letting some of them go myself.

That sounds awesome. I think the world would be a much better place if more people volunteers even a couple hours a month of their time. I already volunteer weekly at the cat shelter.

Great point I'll watch out for that. =) I realized there is no reason to try and fit frames that really don't fit which was obvious, but liberating.

I asked $35 total for all those Schwinns. It was cheap, but I wasn't interested in messing around with them anymore and the Supersport has a dent in the top tube or I would have asked more. They got 2 good tires and tubes on the Women's varisty in the package deal as well. I have a Continental road bike I kept because I think it only needs a basic tuneup to get going. I don't think I paid anything for any of these bikes or if I did I nabbed a part or two of them so I am still coming out just fine.

I was doing pretty good the last two months as well. I looked around and figured all of the wheels hanging around were definitely not needed. I double checked the wheels to see what could be used in the future, and if it was too far gone already I cut out the spokes and will recycle the spokes and rims for scrap. I turned 30+ wheels into a box of hubs. I have also been selling a fair amount of parts lately including a couple of framesets and that has helped to make some more room.

Until yesterday when I bought the parts stash of a local flipper getting out of the flipping business. One completely full F150 later and this followed me home:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5220/...2444b82f_o.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5015/...7999649c_o.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5293/...47342244_o.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5095/...00612438_o.jpg

I gave away and disposed of a lot of stuff before the winter hit, and I'm getting itchy do do it again.