Suppose it’s a $5 item. Give it to a friend. Some friends might insist on paying, some won’t. I wouldn’t be asking for them to pay me anything though, in fact the opposite I would tell them to just take it. If they insist I would take the money. This is happening a lot right now during COVID. We are buying things for each other if we find an item at the grocery store that a friend is having trouble finding. Also, some of us are getting items we didn’t really want because the store or shopper substituted an item on an online order, and so people give the items to friends rather than returning the item. I’ll probably throw it away if no one wants it, but it could take me a year or two to throw it.
Suppose it’s $100. Possibly, give it to a friend or family member. Is it a gifty thing? Then it might be a gift for someone for an occasion, but I might gift it without any occasion. I have a regift shelf with items like this. I might try to sell it, really depends what it is. I think it is more likely worth more as a gift that I don’t have to buy, because I doubt I can sell it for $100.
Now suppose it’s over $500. If my immediate family could use it I would give it to them, otherwise I would try to sell it. As time passes, let’s say a few years have passed, and I can’t sell it for much, eventually I might clear it out of the house and give it as a gift to someone who isn’t close family. I do tend to hold onto things for a while if they worth quite a bit of money, even if it just sits in a closet. Eventually, I get to a point that I rather someone get use out of it.
I have things laying around that I have saved, like curtains that were from a previous home that don’t fit a window right now. Sometimes I think of making pillows from the fabric since the colors still match my furniture. I have the regift shelf I told you about above, but I do regularly gift people those things. I have boxes of items waiting for me to get back into a larger house, and I miss many of those things. It is not a case of out of sight out of mind. On a regular basis I want something from one of those boxes. I also have a few pieces of furniture I really should get rid of, but haven’t, and even if I was in the bigger house I should get rid of those pieces of furniture. What stops me is the money I paid for them, or some memory of when I loved the item.