Prohibited items

WhimSale is for household goods and for what a roadside stand sells. This list exists because the alternative, which is deciding case by case, at speed, on a Saturday, is how a marketplace ends up hosting something it cannot defend.

Two things make this list stricter than the law. Everything here is picked up in person from a private address, and a good deal of it is bought sight-unseen from a photograph. Both raise the stakes on things that would be unremarkable in a shop.

Never

• Firearms, ammunition, and their components: including frames, receivers, magazines and parts kits. Michigan permits many private sales; WhimSale does not host any of them. Sell those through a dealer.
• Explosives, fireworks, and black powder.
• Alcohol, tobacco, vapes, and cannabis in any form.
• Prescription medicines, supplements, and medical devices that require a prescription, including unused ones, and including the bathroom cabinet of an estate.
• Live animals, and anything made from an endangered species: ivory, tortoiseshell, most furs and feathers.
• Human remains or bodily fluids.
• Stolen goods, or anything you cannot prove you may sell.
• Counterfeits: bags, watches, trainers, software, anything.
• Anything containing personal data you have not wiped: hard drives, phones, laptops, tablets, cameras with cards still in them.
• Documents that identify a person: passports, licenses, birth certificates, checkbooks, benefit letters. Estates turn these up constantly. Shred them.
• Recalled products, especially cots, car seats and children’s sleep equipment.
• Airbags, catalytic converters, and vehicle parts whose sale is restricted.
• Hazardous chemicals: pesticides, pool chemicals, solvents in bulk, anything with a skull on the label.
• Adult material.
• Any food that needs refrigeration to stay safe, and any food made anywhere but a home kitchen under the rules below. See Food.

Food

Michigan lets somebody sell certain foods made in their own home kitchen without a license and without an inspection. That is the cottage food law, it is narrower than most people expect, and everything WhimSale allows in the way of food sits inside it. This page is not legal advice. If what you make is not plainly on the allowed side, call MDARD at 800-292-3939 before you list it.

What may be sold

• Cottage food, and only the shelf stable kind. Breads and other baked goods without a cream, custard or meat filling. Jams, jellies and preserves. Candy, brittle and fudge. Dry mixes, granola, popcorn and roasted nuts. Dried herbs and dried pasta. Roasted coffee. Vinegars. Every one of these needs a label, and WhimSale asks for a photograph of the real label rather than words typed into a form.
• Eggs, uncut produce, honey and maple syrup are their own rules in Michigan, not cottage food rules. They are real roadside stand goods and they are not open on WhimSale yet. Do not list them as cottage food to get around that. When they open they get their own labels and their own words here.

What may never be sold, whatever the label says

• Anything that needs refrigeration to stay safe. This is the line the whole cottage food law is drawn on and it is not negotiable. Cheesecake, pumpkin pie, cream and custard pies and anything with a cream cheese frosting. Meat and seafood of any kind, including jerky. Canned vegetables, salsa, pickles and other acidified foods. Garlic in oil. Kombucha, fresh juice, milk, butter and soft cheese. Cut melon, sprouts, cooked rice and cooked beans. A thing does not become shelf stable because a seller believes it is.
• Anything made outside your own home kitchen, or made for you by somebody else, or bought to sell on. Cottage food is a permission for a person and a kitchen, not for a product.
• Food for pets or livestock, which Michigan regulates separately and which cottage food does not cover.
• Anything with alcohol or cannabis in it, including baked goods. Those are already on the Never list above and the exception is not a food exception.
• Samples and tastings. Not on WhimSale, and not at the address a WhimSale listing sent somebody to.

Michigan only

Cottage food may be sold and handed over within Michigan only. That covers the buyer, the seller and every step in between. WhimSale does not ship food at all today, so in practice a food listing is picked up at the seller’s address, and that address has to be in Michigan. A buyer outside the state cannot buy it, cannot have it mailed, and cannot arrange for somebody to carry it over the line.

The label is the seller’s, and it has to be real

Michigan requires a label on every cottage food product carrying the product name, the name and physical address of the operation with no PO boxes, the ingredients in descending order by weight including the sub-ingredients of anything prepared you used, the net weight or volume with the metric equivalent, a “Contains” statement naming any of the nine federal allergens, and the words “Made in a home kitchen that has not been inspected by the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development” in a size and a color a person can actually read.

WhimSale shows buyers your photograph of that label. We never edit, blur or crop it: an edited regulatory label is worse than an unedited one, because what an allergic buyer then reads is our version of a legal document. If you do not want your home address on a public page, register with the MSU Product Center and print a label carrying your telephone number and registration number in place of the address. It costs up to $50 once. Your name is on the label either way.

A listing whose label is missing, unreadable, or a photograph of something other than the label comes down. So does a listing whose ingredients do not match the label in the photograph, and that one is not a warning first.

The rules themselves are at michigan.gov/mdard.

Only with care

• Cots, car seats and children’s equipment. Check the model against the CPSC recall list before you list it. Car seats have expiry dates printed on them; expired ones may not be listed at all.
• Anything painted before 1978: cots, chests, doors, toys. Say so in the description; lead paint is the seller’s to disclose.
• Knives and tools. Kitchen and workshop, fine. Switchblades and weapons, no.
• Electrical items. If it is not safe to plug in, say so and sell it as parts.
• Upholstered furniture. Old foam and cigarette smoke are worth mentioning.

What happens if you list one

1. We remove the listing, and any live order is canceled and refunded.
2. We tell you why.
3. Repeated or deliberate listings end the account.
4. Some categories we are legally obliged to report. Stolen goods, material involving children, and endangered species are not warned about first.

If you are not sure

Ask us before you list it. hello@whimsale.com. We would rather answer a question than pull a listing on a Saturday morning with someone’s money already taken.