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Old 10-14-2018, 03:28 PM
 
172 posts, read 144,140 times
Reputation: 255

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I've been reading some old moving threads and wanted to see who is currently planning to move.

With any luck, we will be moving next June after the youngest graduates HS. It's been our 2 year plan so I've been working on home projects and decluttering slowly. I'm now going back through areas and getting more ruthless in what stays or goes.
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Old 10-14-2018, 09:28 PM
 
Location: Florida Baby!
7,682 posts, read 1,260,973 times
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I'm moving in two weeks from a 1 bedroom townhouse in CT to a 2 bedroom apartment in FL. I spent 3 weeks getting out stuff and ready for a moving sale. Last weekend I had the sale and less than 10 people showed up. It was pretty much a bust except I did sell my Sauder craft armoire. Part of the issue is that I couldn't really put out signs and my place is hard to find. Since then, I've been selling items piecemeal on Craigslist and local Facebook tag sales sites with modest success. Today and tomorrow I'm having a "Free for All" for the small stuff I don't want to take with me. Next step will be taking what's left over to Salvation Army, and in the case of books, the public library. This has been compounded by the fact that my daughter left a bunch of stuff when she moved out we're dealing with that as well.

After hemming and hawing, I decided that I want to sell my most of my furniture. I'm getting an ABS Relo-Cube, and have hired someone to help me load it. I want to use only one cube to keep the cost down. I'm not having much luck on Craigslist selling the furniture, but the woman who is helping me pack the re-lo cube (she is a professional organizer) said she would take my furniture (there's not much), sell it and split the proceeds with me.

It's been a frantic few weeks. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. I've never done a cross-country move by myself before, and I am very nervous about it. I'm doing all my own packing and it just feels monumental.

The light at the end of the tunnel will be jumping into the swimming pool at my new place!
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Old 10-14-2018, 09:34 PM
 
Location: Silicon Valley
18,812 posts, read 32,258,091 times
Reputation: 38559
My downsizing moves are over. I would just add my personal experience about things you should not get rid of.

Don't get rid of your tools. This includes sewing machines and some basic kitchen stuff.

Anything else, pretty much can be found used for cheap that you'll be happy with.
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Old 10-15-2018, 02:38 AM
 
Location: Henderson, NV
7,087 posts, read 8,585,304 times
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Yes indeed! We are most likely going to be able to start the process of getting a semi-custom home built in this community by the end of the year, but then it's about 9 months as I understand to complete the home.

In the meantime, I have a serious amount of work to do. I want to clarify, I'm not a hoarder, I'm not a person who clutters my house whatsoever, but one year ago this month, my dad basically told me to get all of my stuff out of his house because they were doing some remodeling work and he just was like, son, I can't have this stuff here forever. Regardless, I mean, he was right, it had to happen eventually as there was stuff from my childhood, teenage years, and because I had went through a number of moves, I had also stored some stuff in his attic that I just didn't have room for in smaller condos. Last year in October, I was incredibly busy with company business, it was the worst possible timing, he gave me a week to get this stuff done, which caused us not to speak for about 6 weeks because of how he handled it (not the request itself, which was fine), and I basically bought a few extra large garage metal shelving units and stacked them against my existing ones. I moved, I don't know, 4-5 SUV loads full of stuff back to my house?

So in the final result, a year later, I have been extremely busy with work and haven't had the chance to sell or otherwise organize most of this stuff. I put it away in the garage or closets, so my house LOOKS no more cluttered than before, but in reality there are places bursting at the seams with nonsense that has to be sold or given away before we move. I mostly left the worthless stuff for them to take to Goodwill but I wasn't pulling up eBay every 5 seconds either, so I'm sure some of what I took back is also pretty much worthless. I'm not joking it'll probably be a month-long process to take pictures of all this, organize it, sell it, ship it off places, etc. I'm trying to meet a bunch of deadlines that come up by April or so, then I'm going to take some time off work to deal with all of this before I move.

Even just thinking about it bothers me, like I wish I could deal with it this second, but I know I'll have more time next spring because these deadlines will have passed and I need to get my work ready. Beyond that, since this is the first time I'll be making a 1,000 mile move (roughly) since many years ago, I'm going to need to cut down on a lot of other stuff. The irony is we'll be moving into a much larger house, but I don't really care, I am not boxing up useless nonsense here that I don't use as it is, so I'd rather take the opportunity to cut my possessions down to what I really value. I'm even going through my library and either buying everything in eBook form if I really care about it, or writing down the titles and giving away the books, then if I ever want to rebuy them later on eBook I'll have a record of what I owned. I'm tired of moving 7-8 boxes of books. I'll keep the coffee table / expensive picture books I have, they're great, but not the basic paperbacks and stuff like that I haven't opened in years. The more stuff you move, the more expensive it is, so may as well cut down the load.

In a weird way I'm looking forward to the process, though, just trying to see how much stuff I can offload. What I hate is that as much as part of me would like to be more "minimalist," that's just not a realistic thing for someone like me. I have a large amount of film equipment and as an independent filmmaker, you really need to have your own gear so you can go make your own projects without needing to rent everything. Beyond that, the rental market is absolutely brutal. We've had situations where they want to charge 10% of the purchase price of an item for ONE DAY of rental! Absolutely ludicrous. So I bought most of my own gear, probably around $75,000 in gear originally, and while it's a real pain to store it and move it around, there's no point selling stuff you're just going to need to use later anyway. In a perfect world, if I made it as a writer-director being paid regularly for big projects, I'd sell it off because I wouldn't ever be making my own projects again, but that world isn't this one yet :P
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Old 10-15-2018, 11:44 AM
 
1,678 posts, read 3,929,543 times
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Default Decluttering

I AM!!! I am downsizing to a small apartment and really don't want to move all the crap I have. I'm struggling because I have many things that are "family heirlooms". I keep telling myself I'm not gonna use them - I don't entertain, or hold Holiday meals where I need them. My niece said pick a couple of things and sell the rest. That's the problem... how do I pick a couple... I have a service for 12 of Garnet Red Depression Glass - I'll never use but my Gram told my parents and Aunt & Uncle that I was to get them after I mentioned how pretty they are as a child.... My Aunt and Mom spent the better part of an afternoon carefully wrapping and boxing the collection for me. I've since put them in quilted padded zipper bags and have them in a sturdy tote. I know I can't move the tote myself - and the movers are gonna be pissed. I have the only piece of hand cut stemware from my mom.... all other pieces were broken in use or moves.. it's just hard. I don't have much more time so these decisions have to be made now.
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Old 10-15-2018, 12:55 PM
 
Location: state of confusion
1,300 posts, read 841,238 times
Reputation: 3122
Been working on it for 2 years now LOL! Pretty much sold/donated/given away most everything. My dining room is now full of packed boxes. Only taking a few pieces of furniture that I've had since I was a teenager! Too sentimental to part with. Will keep mattresses and sofa until the move and then discard. Down to the bare necessities at this point. Just need to come to a decision on where we are headed, then get the house on the market and go!
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Old 10-15-2018, 04:22 PM
 
Location: Texas Hill Country
1,809 posts, read 1,396,223 times
Reputation: 5666
We downsized for five years before retiring and moving. Still wound up with several Pods of stuff, mostly tools, books and musical instruments. But we started reasonably fresh here. Then Spousal Unit's mom died and we inherited what turned into an entire garage bay of stuff. Four years later, we've gotten about ¾ of that stuff moved out.

So even though we're not moving, we're still downsizing. I have a rule: for every item that comes into the house, an item has to leave (not counting food). So far, we're better on the stuff leaving, but I do believe we still have entirely too much stuff.

Once a week, I pick a location, such as one drawer, shelf, closet, whatever, and empty it completely. What I don't remember owning goes away. If we still need/use it, we keep it. What's left gets organized, either in the original location or with other similar/related items. This alone has cleared an amazing amount of clutter.
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Old 10-15-2018, 09:03 PM
 
Location: Henderson, NV
7,087 posts, read 8,585,304 times
Reputation: 9978
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arkay66 View Post
Once a week, I pick a location, such as one drawer, shelf, closet, whatever, and empty it completely. What I don't remember owning goes away. If we still need/use it, we keep it. What's left gets organized, either in the original location or with other similar/related items. This alone has cleared an amazing amount of clutter.
I really love your idea! I thought the same thing, like maybe instead of seeing it as this HUGE task that needs to be done and stressing over it, because I do have the luxury of some time, maybe I could focus on one area at at time. Like you said, pick a drawer, or a cabinet of my office, go through it all, downsize and keep what's essential. Maybe a closet another day, go through the closet or half the closet, deal with that, then just slowly make the progress rather than making it some herculean all-at-once task. All I know is there is a lot of nonsense here that needs to make its way out before the move lol.
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Old 10-15-2018, 10:04 PM
 
Location: Florida
7,212 posts, read 6,981,525 times
Reputation: 17694
I am.

I have a bunch of stuff listed on eBay.
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Old 10-16-2018, 12:57 AM
 
5,139 posts, read 8,807,674 times
Reputation: 5248
I’m moving in about 5 months. Busy shredding boxes of papers I don’t need to keep anymore.
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