The experience of selling everything you own

Selling your possessions is no joke–it has been a full-time job for me for the last four months at least! And people can be so wonderful and weird. Mostly they promise to come purchase $200 worth of your things and then never show up (based on actual events) or they do show up and want to dig everything out of every last closet and then want to buy it all for $20 (also based on actual events.) I learned to set my personal rules and stick to them in order to keep my sanity. No, I don’t deliver, no you can’t have my $50 kitchen appliance for $5, I’m very sorry it didn’t work out for you. It is my job to sell you the things, it is your job to figure out how to come get them.

But I also met some really great people. A few women came back to my house again and again for more items, and I had many great conversations with fun folks. My favorite was an older couple that purchased my hand sander and a camera tripod, then stood and talked to me for an hour about just about everything. I want them to adopt me! They were so cute.

There was the New Yorker that loudly proclaimed the vintage camera bag I was trying to sell him was the ugliest thing he had ever seen, then proceeded to walk around the house like he owned the place. The dad who came to pick up a rug and chatted about his college summers working in Yellowstone. The guy who bought my computer desk who does a fair amount of exotic travel on his own. The college kid that collects old Pentax cameras, almost exclusively to use while drunk. The two tiny girls who muscled my sofa out the door and down to the street.

95% of the people I sold to were women and I never felt threatened to have them in my house, though I full well understand how intimidating it is to walk up to someone’s house you don’t know and knock on the door, hoping it’s a KitchenAid mixer on the other side of the door and not an axe murderer. The only people who mentioned that I was potentially crazy were men. And the only time I really did feel anxious about it was my very first sale.

I had inventoried everything I wanted to sell in my house, made the Wix website (laboriously detailed in a previous post) then spent many, many hours copying the information and photos on the website and posting each item on Facebook and Craigslist. Within a few minutes of posting my very first item, a large leather-like sectional sofa for only $100, I was inundated with FB messages and sold it to the first guy who responded. He wanted to come THAT NIGHT, at about 9 pm, and he was going to bring a bunch of buddies to help carry out the couch.

Apparently, it’s only when you invite several men you don’t know to your address that you realize that you are, in fact, a woman who lives by herself. I frantically called a few friends, texted my neighbor to keep a weather eye out, and finally managed to do the smart thing and call my brother to come over. Graciously, he came right away and got there right before three burly Mexican men showed up in a huge truck.

It turned out that they were hilarious–the reason I had priced the sofa so low was, #1, it wasn’t high quality to begin with, and #2 and most important, it was going to be almost impossible to get out of the house. It took them about an hour of hard work and partially dismantling a doorway, but they did it! And with a great attitude. There was lots of laughing for which I was grateful, and for my brother, who hung out down there and helped while I continued to get other work done.

The yard sale

Overall, it was a good, if sometimes frustrating experience to sell everything. My goal was to culminate in a big garage sale where I would get rid of everything for rock-bottom prices and be done with the whole thing. I advertised like crazy, making posts on Facebook and Craigslist, random free yard sale sites, and even took out an ad in the paper for $18. I put physical signs up directing drivers to my house and hung a sheet from the windows that I had spray painted with the words “GARAGE SALE” so no one could miss it!

I prayed for people to show up–and they did! I had about 60 people stop by, including one good friend, and had another good friend join me for part of the day. Unfortunately, those 60 people didn’t buy a whole lot, and I only made about $220. I had expected to make closer to $500 and had I sold everything I initially put up for sale at the prices I asked, I could have made as much as $6000 total. Instead, I’ve made just under $4000, which isn’t too terrible.

Also, never go past noon on a yard sale. I mean, I got a lot of reading done, but I would have rather done that indoors.

After the yard sale, I divvied up what was left into piles of things to throw away or recycle, items to donate, and 125 items I deemed still worth trying to sell. Those are currently in my mom’s attic and are still listed on Facebook, and will probably come back out for a summer yard sale here in her neighborhood. Maybe a different crowd will see something they like.

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    Sara Beth Written by:

    We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm, and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open. – Jawaharlal Nehru

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