Fish Pond

When you move into a house you are always left with what someone else thought was a good idea.  Many times you feel a need to change what others have done.  This may or may not be straight forward.  When we moved in we found that our backyard had a fish pond.  This was not just any fish pond, but a fish pond that was hand dug (the clay was spread over the flower garden).  The pump was precariously perched on the edge of the brick surround and powered by a series of daisy chained interior extension chords.   It was also right outside our basement door.  A small child could have easily tripped and fallen into the 3 foot deep pool of slimy green water. Okay we didn't feel safe about the whole set-up!

We were encouraged when we found that putting food in the water brought fish up.  That meant things could have been worse, the fish were at least alive!

We knew we needed to get the fish to a safer location and to remove the pond.

Seeing as my wife and I both work full time, we found it hard to imagine how we could do all the work ourselves.  Here is where I wondered if we could sell the fish, and hopefully the pond on Craig's List.  I really didn't know if this would fly, but I also knew I couldn't hire someone to come and do the work for me either.

I wish I had taken picture of the pond.  It may not have helped me sell it, but it would have been great for this post.  I advertised it on Craig's List for $75.  After a couple of inquiries I ended up selling the pond and the fish for $50.  The humbling thing was that it took the people who bought it a good 10 hours to do all the work to remove the fish and the pond.  This was 10 hours I didn't need to spend working on the yard/pond and actually saved me the time and money of getting rid of it. It was encouraging to receive an email the next day from the purchaser letting me know that the fish were happy and well in their new surroundings.

 Not only this but it gained us $50 for our Craig's List jar.  We have tried to only spend money on Craig's List that we make on Craig's List.  Exceptions to this are when we have been gifted money and we decide to purchase the "gift" from Craig's List rather than a retail store.  So far so good.  We have had some great success and a few failures as well.