The evolution of selling all of your stuff
We have to be out in just a few days and there’s still a decent amount of stuff that needs to go. Thankfully we’ve found a place for all of it, we just need to get it to its new home now. It’s been an interesting few weeks. Once we got back from house hunting we settled into the task of selling all of our stuff. I didn’t think we had that much stuff, and we don’t by comparison, but what I’ve learned is this: you don’t know what you’ve got till you have to get rid of it!
Selling all of our stuff went something like this ….
3 weeks from out
We’ve got 3 weeks! That’s tons of time and we don’t have that much stuff anyway. I took my time walking around the house, dusting and staging furniture for their photo shoots. Surely someone will scoop whatever it is right up! I love whatever it is and someone else will too. The pricing is important 3 weeks out because at this point I was totally delusional about what people want to pay for my used stuff. It’s only a few years old you say, it’s in perfect condition you say, let’s ask for half of retail. Ha!
2 weeks from out
We’ve managed to sell a lot of little cheap stuff but the big stuff remains. Almost none of the furniture has moved. Sure we’ve sold a few dressers and the cute wicker storage basket from our front hall but what about the dining room set? Wine cabinet? Office furniture? It’s all still around with nary a nibble. The next step was to cut the price. At this point we still had hope that maybe our ads just hadn”t reached the right people so while we cut the price it’s still in the ballpark of reasonable.
1 week from out
At this point we were starting to freak out a little. WTF are we going to do with our big furniture! It needs to get out but there are no takers. It turns out, everyone already has a dining room set, office furniture, etc. When I put myself in everyone else’s shoes in this scenario, we wouldn’t have taken anymore furniture even if it was free. While this is a nice realization it doesn’t help one bit. Our punt was to take it all to Goodwill but I’m telling you this stuff is practically brand new & we’d love to recoup some money on it for the move. Consignment shops to the rescue! There’s an adorable shop down the street and our stuff fits the vibe perfectly. She took most of it and a co-worker bought the dining room set. Yes! The big stuff is solved, back to the little stuff. We have a lot of yard tools and what not collected over the 11 years we’ve been here. We cut the price and post it yet again on our neighborhood’s “next door” site. When I say cut the price here I mean we cut it to like $10.
The final week
Ah, less than a week from closing and there’s still stuff around. It appears the stuff has mated and multiplied. How is there anything left? Really though, when you get rid of absolutely everything even the background stuff that you didn’t think of needs to go like your kitchen trash can and that kind of stuff. Our walk through is now in 4 days & our ad reads something like this: Dear neighbors – we put a bunch of free stuff in our driveway, come fight over it. This ad gets a ridiculous amount of attention & I can barely keep up with replying to all the inquiries so I dragged it all out there and let them sort it out. We finally found the right price point 🙂
At this point, we’re just looking forward to having it done and closed. I’m starting to question if the stuff we planned to drive down in the cars will all fit. I already have my victims picked out if it doesn’t. A week from today we’ll be settling down in the Outer Banks for a week long vacation with our family. When we booked it I didn’t think our house would be sold by now let alone that we’d be completely moved out and heading to Keys right after. I splurged on an oceanfront condo thinking it’d be our last time in the OBX for a while and it will be so I’m glad I did.
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that I never regret spending more money for a better experience, ever. We’ll never forget waking up to the ocean every morning during this final family vacation. You know what we will forget? The things we got rid of the past 3 weeks. I’ve forgotten a lot of them already. Experiences not things is where it’s at everyone! I’m a trustworthy source on this one now most of our things are gone.
On a closing note – we went out for a final night in our neighborhood last night, visited our favorite places and said goodbye to friends and neighbors and it was COLD. I was in jeans and I wished I had a sweatshirt. I’m pretty sure it’s never cold in Key Largo in late June – we’ll find out soon. The diving conditions have been amazing lately too, I’m really looking forward to being in the water all the time!
Until next time…
Warm thoughts to all!