OK, so I didn't sell everything I own, but I got close. When my husband and I decided to live a life of full time travel, we knew that keeping up with our apartment in Chicago would be too much of a hassle and eat away too much of our budget. It was time to move out, slim down our belongings and only keep (in storage) about a quarter of our things.
Here's how we did it:
First, we packed away everything we definitely wanted to keep. We'll have a home again someday, so we arranged to store my grandmother's sofa, dishes and sentimental belongings in my parent's basement, 400 miles away. (Thanks, Mom and Dad!) Everything in the keep pile was put in the bedroom, everything we were selling was left in the living room. This was a good way to assess each object in our home and got all of the good stuff out of the way. Now we could see what was left, and figure out how organize and sell it.
Then with the help of a few fantastic friends, we rearranged all of the furniture in the house to make the living room and backyard look somewhat like a showroom. We hauled our sofa and other items into the keep pile in the bedroom so there was enough space for the merchandise to shine. (Yes, the bedroom was a disaster! But that's ok, we just closed the door for the day.)
We positioned everything around the room as neatly as possible so that shoppers could get a good glimpse at what we had. Then we priced everything to sell. Since we were leaving for good, we were really ready to bargain- EVERYTHING MUST GOOOO!
Next it was time to advertise. All of this work doesn't mean a thing if no one shows up! I put a garage sale ad as well as individual listings for the big ticket items on Craigslist and also in the Apartment Therapy classifieds. I didn't include an address in the ad, but wrote back to everyone who was interested with our address and phone number. This worked pretty well, but the most effective advertising I did was to my own friends. I bugged the living daylights out of my Facebook friends and Twitter followers to come early and often to our home that day, and that's how we made most of our sales.
Overall, the event was a success! We made enough cash to cover our moving costs and what we were not able to sell was donated to our local thrift shop. It was definitely worth all of the hard work and when we settle down someday, we'll get to start fresh with a clean slate.
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Good for you! We have been trying to get up the umph to do this ourselves. We've been nearly full time nomads for the last 6 years but haven't been able to muster the energy to go back and get rid of our stuff. You are wise to get is over with before hand! Now you are free!
Really good advice for first-timers!
sorry i missed it :)
As someone who came out the other end of a trip like this, I wish we could go back and take this step. We loveloveloved where we were renting and it had taken us a year to get the place we wanted, so even though we were leaving for several months we decided to keep paying the rent so we wouldn't lose it and come back to compromise. Our rent back home was the biggest expense of our four months and dozen countries on the road. By far.
A couple months after we came home? The landlord decided to take the property off the rental market, and left us scrambling anyway. We had to find somewhere quickly and we had all our stuff even though four months on the road with no checked luggage had made us learn how to live more minimally... and now I write this from our compromise flat, with stuff that doesn't yet fit or feel like home. And the stinger? With what we would have saved in rent by giving up our flat, we could have stayed on the road for over a year rather than the four months we budgeted.
So yes people... do this selling everything bit! (Or make your landlord reallllly promise.)
Hope your travels go magnificently well!
I've found a yearly review of my household stuff does wonders for reducing clutter and making a few dollars. Tips from professional organizer, Peter Walsh, have helped me learn to sort through belongings regularly to determine if they still have the value they once had for me. Craig's list has proved a wonderful resource for selling furniture, as well as holding an occasional yard sale for smaller items. Making sure anything I don't sell at the yard sale doesn't come back into the house and goes directly to charity has kept me from letting my "stuff" take over. Good luck with your travels!
We did the same when we moved from Brisbane to Chicago -- sold all we owned and we were able to travel for 8 months off of it! Best decision we ever made. And we live a much simpler life in Chicago without years of accumulated "stuff". Good on ya.
Very smart to put a single price for things - at $1 per piece of clothing or $5 per camera, it makes it seem like a bargain, gets people to buy more, and it's super easy to bargain. Have fun traveling!
Congrats! This reminds of the wonderful book All My Life For Sale:
http://www.allmylifeforsale.com/
Well Done!
Sounds like something to do even without the travelling bit...A clean slate right now sounds wonderful!
If you plan ahead a bit more, you could also make arrangements with a re-seller who ordinarily sells estates or storage shed contents. (I have a few flea market buddies who do this work.) They would come in after your yard sale and make you an offer on what's left. This would let you ask for slightly higher prices because you would make up for it later if things don't move as well as you would like. Anything THEY don't want could go to a thrift shop, then.
When my boyfriend and I up and moved to Portugal, we had a big party and invited everyone we'd ever met, told them our plan, and said, "Everything - Five Dollars." It worked out really well, because of course we accepted far less than $5 for itty-bitty things, but people wanted to give us more as a kind of support for our move, and the car went for substantially more than five bucks. But it was FUN! It was a hoot, in fact, and we cleaned up and totally cleaned out. We dressed up in our goofiest clothes and hats and sold them right off of our backs. We also had a Safe Sex Booth that made a lot of money. For fifty cents, you'd come to the booth and either I or BF (depending on preference) would shake your hand and say, "Let's wait awhile."
i tend to design, and redesign my space often. craigslist has become a HUGE help, in not only fueling my obsession of changing out pieces, but giving me the financial ability to do so. once i'm tired of a piece of furniture or decor item, i place it on craigslist and use the funds i made to purchase something new.
in a great stroke of luck, i listed 3 old winter coats for $50 (higher than I thought they would ever sell for), and a lady picked them up same day. that enabled me to snag this killer deal on some vintage chairs i had found locally but was $50 short on.
LOVE craigslist!
Husband and I did something similar when we moved back to the East Coast from Seattle. Three years spent there (post-college) meant that we didn't accumulate that much stuff, but we didn't have to go full-scale garage sale. All of our worldly possessions fit into an 8'x8'x8' portion of a moving truck, which included two couches we loved and a scooter in a wood crate we made for the shipment.
Our course of action was to sell as many of the "big ticket" items on craigslist/etc. first because you'll get the best return that way. It especially helps if you have stuff like a full bedroom set. You wouldn't believe how many grad students/newcomers were interested in getting all of their bedroom furniture in one purchase and have us deliver it. Our fancy grill we got for free and replaced a $25 burner on also netted us $200 bucks that way. This post has great recommendations for getting rid of all of that "other stuff" that we didn't have or were able to keep.
There would seem to be something rather important missing in this post - namely the tutorial on how to make a "life of full time travel" a possibility. I'm pretty sure I could do this step - selling all my stuff that is - but then, what about the rest of it? I guess my creativity and conviction has been failing me if I haven't yet figured out how to do this...must.think.more....
I initially read the travel line as "a life full of time travel," and i thought THAT'S AWESOME! "Full time travel" is nice, too.
I fantasize OFTEN about doing this! Selling every single thing I own--except for my fancy expensive leather Crate & Barrel chair--and moving from my spacious suburban apartment to a 300 sf studio in San Francisco. Someday...
My husband and I moved from Chicago to Sydney and we did the same thing. We sold almost everything we owned, and just kept a small storage space. Then we went travelling for 8 months around the world. It was one of the best experiences of my life!!!! It was so nice to get rid of all the stuff and travelling and starting new in another country was something we always wanted to do…..good for you
Good for you. When I left NYC and travelled for a year before relocating to Charleston, SC I stored MOST of my apartment furniture, only to spend the additional dollars to move it down here to realize it totally wasn't going to work in my new house. I think I could have saved just the memories and been better off!
We are in the process of selling everything to travel with our truck camper. This is a very useful read for us . Thanks
Since my long-time home is a one-bedroom rental apartment in NYC, I was able to sublease it for three years while I worked my way around. After a week, I didn't miss my beloved plants, but was glad to have pictures of family and friends to set out in every temporary home on the road. During those days, I made a commitment to myself that my apartment would always be "at least" as nice as some of those awful rooms I stayed in. Glad I went 25 years ago when I was still in fairly good shape, rather than waiting for a retirement that hasn't arrived yet. Still have all the good stuff I left back home and lotsa good friends everywhere I stopped. Lesson: go sooner than later!
A life full of time travel ... This Web site will now be known as TARDIS Therapy.
@Lunza - that is awesome!!!! Is it bigger on the inside? ;)
I am planning to hold an apartment sale also, and have been pulling things out of my closets, dusting things off, and putting little price tags on everything -- BUT everyone keeps telling me that most people who go to these things are cheeep and no one will want to pay me more than $5 or $10 for anything. Now, I do have a bunch of smaller cheap items, but really, there are some things that are worth quite a bit. I am selling some of my furniture, too. My prices are still a bargain, and I do put a higher tag on them to allow for haggling but... did you have any high-ticket things and if so, did you manage to sell them?
Anyway, to the OP - can you share the wording you used for your ads and how you managed the day of the sale itself? Did you have people there helping you, taking cash, etc.? Was it a definitive time period for people to come over, like in a garage sale, or did you make appointments with people too? Did your neighbors come by to check it out or give you a hard time? Thanks.
This is what we did when we realized we wanted to downsize and went from a large 2br to a small 1br and advice I would pass on.
I would say anything you have that you would ask for more than $5/$10 or so on put in a craigslist ad. It won't seem strange or anything. You can find almost anything on craigslist or kijiji (in Canada). Title the ad with the larger pieces or as a moving sale and in the description put larger pieces first and then some of the smaller items, all w/ suggested prices. Include some pics of better pieces so the viewers can see quality.
Once you start getting responses, schedule some appointments for people to come over letting them know they may want to bring extra funds because you have even more available than listed. If you have more than you have listed ready and organized then you can kind of sell it as add-ons. For example, we sold our couch, dining set, extra bookcases but each appt bought extra stuff like the old printer, extra vases, random posters, and items from a box that had sign Anything in box $1 apiece. You could have boxes or zones for different price points if you have a lot of small items. After 3 appointments most of the big stuff was gone and we were surprised by the small things we sold too.
Making the appointments made it easier for my husband and myself because we didn't have help. Watching a few people in our apartment at a time was easier, we didn't upset neighbors, parking at our building wasn't super easy, and we could kind of put a hold on people who wanted to be too cheap by saying we had another appointment later that had already shown interest at set price. If you are wanting to sell off most of your stuff, definitely use the room/closet idea where nothing past a closed door is available. Have plastic bags or newspaper on hand to wrap stuff or package. Finally if you have a lot of larger pieces, remind interested buyers to bring moving help as you will be unable to monitor sale and haul a couch down 4 flights of stairs or whatever. Trust me on that part. I guess after you had the appointments, you could open it up to more bargaining or a 1day sale knowing what people are willing to pay and what they think is too high.
Oh, and seems we will be doing this again as we prepare for another move. This time we are moving from Canada back to USA. Trust in what others have said it is easier to replace then ship and sometimes you don't need as much stuff as you think you do.
Hope this helps.
After that huge post I also wanted to add this:
If you are wanting to downsize or get rid of things you don't think you can sell, try out freecycle.org. Versus giving to a shop that may or may not sell it or whatever, you can choose who receives your items for free. It's a way to help out others with little money or people who are creative and can re-purpose your 'trash'.
Examples of things that would probably be thrown out at a thrift shop:
1. Old towels/ stained clothes/ dated bedding/ other fabrics can be given to crafters who will give it new life.
2. Broken or aged electronics. People use freecycle to find parts, old cables, and such.
3. Broken furniture or scrap pieces.
4. empty bottles, cans, jars, etc.
5. puzzles and games w/ missing pieces
... and on and on.
Finally, with freecycle.org you can list that you are having a yard sale and that after a certain day/ time everything remaining will be free. People come and get your stuff vs. you having to take it somewhere.
Check it out. Freecycle is found in most major cities all over the country. Membership is usually within in a day, is free, and only requires a yahoo acct. You choose who you give your address or phone number to as first contact is by email unless you choose otherwise.
This post + comments are SO helpful. I am planning a move from Vancouver to Toronto and I hope to sell pretty much everything but the clothes I actually wear, the books I actually read and personal momentos. Thanks for the encouragements!
I am moving from a 3 story, 3 bedroom, 1800 sq ft condo in Houston, to a 700 sq ft barely 1 bdrm apartment in Chicago in 2-3 weeks.
I've been in this house for 7+ years, and I am VERY bad about throwing things away, I'm cluttered.
So I have been trying to figure out how to do a major downsize- and as long as the homeowner's association [those are always fun!] let's me, this is what I am going to have to do.
And so thank you for the idea and the information! I guess the best thing is to go ahead and get everything moved, and maybe come back a week or two later and have a big "estate" like sale.
This does take a ton of work. I had a "moving sale" and then continued to sell the larger items on craigslist. Plan on at least a month or two. I am now having an open house weekend for my family (nieces, nephews and siblings) to come and just take stuff away. At least the 'sentimental' items will stay in the family.
It can be done and once you get over the idea of this huge change in your life, (my building was sold and we were told they are not renewing leases, so not my choice) its actually very freeing. I started looking for big places so I could bring everything with me but now I just want to have a few pieces and even thinking of renting a small studio or 1 bedroom. (I had a 1400 sq ft loft -- looking at a 700sq ft apartment now) I lived in that place for 12 years! And I am amazed at the stuff I accumulated.
As you said, "Everything must GOOOOOO!" It's a good feeling, believe it or not.
I read this post back in December since I was planning on moving back to Californai permanently. Problem is that I was not driving and I was not going to spend almost 2 G's on a uhaul from Oregon to California, so I decided to get rid of everything. It took a lot of time and I'd say I almost done. Got rid of probably 80% total. I plan on havng a little treasure sale to unload some of the things I've collected over the years. Unfortunately I live in an apartment so an in house sale isn't possible. Great idea to have a "show room" of sorts.
This post was an inspiration for a collector! I can't wait to have just what I love when I find a place back home. Yay!