AuDHD burnout. A separation. A set of drawers covered in mould. And the moment Chris decided he was building this whether anyone helped him or not.
He was walking past a stall. There was a set of drawers — exactly like one he has in his own office. And they were full. Full of an old man's belongings. Gadgets and bits and pieces and memories. All covered in mould. All sitting there in the wet grass waiting for somebody to give them fifty pence.
That's what happens when nobody helps. That's what a life looks like when the person who owned it didn't have a way to clear it, or didn't have anyone to help them do it, or ran out of time before they ran out of stuff.
Chris stood there and thought: that could be mine.
He decided, standing there, that it wouldn't be. Not the mould. Not the boot sale. Not the waiting for someone else to sort it. He's going to leave with a carpet bag and nothing else. Clean. Free. Sorted. That's the goal.
"I didn't want to be leaving anything like that behind. Just me and my carpet bag."
Chris and his wife are going their separate ways. As friends — genuinely, as friends. But still. The house that contained two lives now needs to contain zero things. Everything has to be sold, cleared, or released. He's facing a potential move in weeks, not months.
The last two years have also been, to be direct about it, mentally brutal. AuDHD burnout is real and it is thorough. It takes the things you relied on to function — the drive, the creativity, the ability to start — and it puts them somewhere you can't reach. You stare at the pile and you know what needs doing and your brain won't.
So Chris put his fingers in his ears. Stopped worrying about permission. Stopped waiting for help that wasn't coming.
He built SpicyLister instead.
Nobody helped Chris except his close family. Not institutions. Not systems. Not a single programme or platform that exists for people like him — AuDHD, overloaded, burning out quietly in the background while appearing to function absolutely fine from the outside.
He doesn't want anyone else to be in that position. Not when they're suddenly lumbered with a houseful of things and no idea where to start. Not when they're bereaved and clearing someone else's life on top of their own grief. Not when they're emigrating in six weeks and the charity shop will take their belongings for nothing and sell them back to the neighbourhood at a markup.
Better to ask forgiveness than beg for permission. He's not waiting for the right moment or the right funding or the right circumstances. He's building the help and giving it away before anyone has to ask for it.
Because when you're in the middle of it, you can't ask. You can barely breathe.
"Nobody helped me except my close family. I don't want anybody else to be in that position."
It removes the barrier. The 25-minutes-per-item barrier. The fifteen-decisions-per-listing barrier. The I'll-do-it-tomorrow-but-tomorrow-never-comes barrier.
Take a photo. AI prices it against what's actually sold on eBay, writes the title, writes the description, estimates the postage. Five minutes. Not twenty-five. And if you want it filed to eBay automatically — the agent does that while you make a coffee.
The thing you've been carrying for months sold. It paid for something. You breathed.
That's the whole idea.
At credit prices alone, a Founder recoups their membership in the first three listings. Everything else is because you believed in this before it was big.
The tool is free. It will always be free. No tricks, no seven-day trials, no features held back.
But Chris needs 1,000 Founders to fund what this is trying to become: the garden fêtes, the kids entertainers paid properly, the communities rewarded for participating rather than charged for attending. The village economy made real.
1,000 Founders × £15 = £15,000 a month. That's the number. That's the thing that makes all of it possible without taking a cut from anyone.
If the auto-listings alone are worth more than your membership in a normal week's selling, joining isn't charity. It's maths.
Take a photo. List something. See how it feels when the barrier is gone.
You've been carrying that pile long enough. So has Chris.