I failed at this miserably even with faithfully reading of all the 'don't do's' from seasoned forum members.
Waiting for my toad set up to be completed I am staying near where my storage units are, yes I said storage unit's! AND I had the pleasure of paying the second months rent on all of them just yesterday.
Writing those checks has given me a real good wake up call to eliminate them ASAP! For me it's only been one month and when I went into them to look for something it was a case of "what WAS I thinking keeping all this junk"!
At least I didn't have to spend $1,000 in gas to 'come back' and get rid of them had I already had driven to the west coast as planned.
31 ft Four Winds
Chevy Tracker 4x4 Blue Ox We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned,
so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
If you have a bit of time:
Go through your stuff (and I mean as much as you can - you will find things in those junk drawers and everything else) and put small things into 4 piles:
1. EBay - the stuff you can ship
1a. Amazon - the books/CDs/and DVDs that you can ship
2. Craigslist - the stuff you do not want to ship
3. Garage Sale/Contents of the house sale - the furniture and really big items
4. Donate - the stuff that does not sell at any of the above.
First, sell off the EBay, Amazon, and Craigslist stuff first. Then:
Take pictures, get estimates (if your stuff is antiques or good furniture or housewares) and price your stuff to be half the going rate.
Put price tags on everything, put an ad in Craigslist and in your LOCAL newspaper only (because it usually goes into the web that way too.) And have awesome signs put up the day before you have the sale.
Run the sale at least two days, use a waist cashier's belt or a cashier's box, look professional, and state that the owners are not here, that the sale is run by XYZ company. That way there is no emotion about the prices.
If you can not haggle, get someone else to do the sale for you. You need to rip yourself from your things. They are just things after all. If they hold any sentimental value, you should not sell them.
Anything left over, assess how good it is (would you buy it at a thrift store - no ripped, torn, stained items) and call up the local Salvation Army, Goodwill, and other organizations. Some will pick up, some you have to drop off.
Take pictures of the stuff you plan to donate, get ItsDeductible (just google it and get the online version) and figure out your tax benefits before you send them on their way. We were able to write off over $1K in donations in 2007.
We made $15K in the garage sale/contents of the house sale. We made over several thousand selling off Sasha's music collection over the course of several years. We sold approximately $1K in DVDs and books through Amazon.com over the course of 6-9 months.
If you need to sell immediately:
Do the garage sale and hope for the best.
We've been working towards fulltiming for 4 years and still have a year to go. The advantage to an early start is that you have time to sell things before going into a give-away frenzy.
I had forgotten about Amazon. I had dozens of horse books that I sold on Amazon. They went slowly but it was easy and I made $$.
I had a couple of garage sales but was selling mostly junk so I don't feel that the time invested was worth the money made. However, one way to look at a garage sale is to remember that someone is paying you to take away your junk.
I walked both kids through the house and shop and put their names on the things they wanted. That took care of most of the furniture, tools and memoribilia.
Most of what's left will be donated or tossed.
2 dirt bike enthusiasts and 1 cool Weimaraner
2005 Teton Frontier Experience
1999 Volvo 610
Having just completed the process of downsizing to an RV, my advice to anyone facing it is to torch the house and everything in it. Okay, not really, but if I had to do it over, I'd take out the things that I needed in the RV and a few irreplaceable items and turn the rest over to an estate sales company. Having to pick up every single item you own and ask the "sell, store, give away, or toss" question is a very long and unrewarding process. Take the easiest way out you can find!
"Imoto Ikhaya" - 2003 Kountry Star 3905 (Freightliner, Cat, Allison)
2001 Grand Cherokee
www.twobyroad.com
ViperDriver wrote: ....if I had to do it over, I'd take out the things that I needed in the RV and a few irreplaceable items and turn the rest over to an estate sales company. Having to pick up every single item you own and ask the "sell, store, give away, or toss" question is a very long and unrewarding process. Take the easiest way out you can find!
EXACTLY!! The biggest mistake we made was in NOT doing it this way!!
"Time passes but memories remain"
Fulltime since Jan. 2004
40' Allegro Zephyr
Exactly what we did.......take what we thought we needed, then the rest went with the farm. So easy
Dianne
Donnelly, ID
DataStorm
HAM WB6N (Terry)
2005 Teton 39' Frontier Grand
2003 Freightliner FL60
Life Member Good Sam
Escapees
Geocache..."RVcachers" RV net Blog
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