225 editor Jennifer Tormo. Photo by Collin Richie.
’ve never really had luck with selling my stuff. I’ve typically chosen to donate my clutter—just because it’s easiest, if I’m being honest.
But earlier this year, a local artist I interviewed inspired me to change my ways. She told me about how she was constantly selling things she owned. She’d sell big furniture pieces and art on Facebook Marketplace for pretty good money. There wasn’t much in her house she viewed as irreplaceable. If she wanted to buy something new, she’d sell something old first.
Her house was beautiful—and even more enviably, it was uncluttered.
So I decided it was time to sell something big: my mattress. I had been eyeing a Casper mattress for years, and I finally clicked “add to cart” during the company’s Memorial Day sale. But with the mattress on its way in the mail to me, I became frantic to get rid of my old mattress, which was taking up half the space in my small apartment.
Thinking I’d have a better chance of selling it if I made my listing’s photo look pretty, I did something I should really do more often: I made my bed. I styled my favorite banana-leaf print comforter with a faux fur pink pillow. I hung a neon heart-shaped light above the bed.
A few days after posting, a woman messaged me very interested in buying it. But she spoke Spanish and communicating with her was difficult.
Finally, she agreed to pick up the mattress on a Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.
When she hadn’t shown up by 7, I asked if she was still coming. She said yes, but that she was trying to find someone with a truck she could borrow. I agreed to push our meeting to 8.
And an hour later, I agreed to push our meeting again. And then again.
Finally it was almost 11, and I told her it was too late to come.
“No! Please,” she typed back. “We are coming now!”
When it was midnight, and she was somehow lost halfway across town from my apartment, I really started to wonder what I was doing with my life.
Finally, at 12:30 a.m., an old truck pulled up in front of my building. I was tired. I was frustrated, and I just wanted to get this whole situation over with. And then never sell anything again.
Then out of the car popped: a little girl. “Hi,” she said.
“Hello,” I replied, confused.
“Um, I’m the person you’ve been talking with about the mattress.”
The girl’s mother and brother got out. None of them spoke English.
It took me a minute. But as I slowly processed what was happening, everything started to make sense. The whole night I’d been talking to a kid, who was using the app to communicate for her mother.
When we all went up to my apartment to retrieve my mattress, the whole story started to unfold.
The little girl had been sleeping on a couch. My queen-sized mattress was going to be the biggest, best bed she’d ever owned.
I had explained in my listing that my comforter and bedding was not included with the mattress. But in just a few minutes of talking with the little girl, it became clear that was why she and her family wanted my bed specifically. My pretty photo had done its job.
Right before the family left—sans any pillows or bedding—the little girl looked at me and said, “This is still a really nice bed.” My heart officially broke as I watched them drive away.
The next day, I couldn’t stop thinking about them. A single mom with her kids coming to my apartment after midnight to buy my used things. Honestly, I started feeling guilty I’d taken their money at all.
I’d gotten so caught up in myself and the money that I could make selling my stuff so I could buy newer, nicer stuff. I had never stopped to think about who I was really talking to online—who would want my cheap, used mattress.
So, I sent the girl and her mom a message. I told them that if they came back that night, I’d give them a nice set of sheets, my palm leaf comforter and a mattress pad.
“For free?” she asked me in disbelief about 10 times. “And the pink pillow, too?”
And the pink pillow, too. When her face lit up as I handed it to her later that evening, I realized she needed it way more than I did.
This article was originally published in the August 2018 issue of 225 Magazine.
