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I am trying to figure out the best way to get rid of most of a houseful of stuff when I sell my house and move (I am downsizing in 11 months... greatly). This includes furniture (nothing too expensive but not the cheapest either) to include living room, dining room, and two bedroom sets, office furniture and storage shelves, oriental rugs, dishes and crystal, silverware, kitchen appliances, TVs, decorations, etc. My wild guess is there is less than $10,000 worth of goods in the house to get rid of.
Literally, I am moving from a 2000 sq ft townhouse and what I want to keep I can fit into the back of a 10' U-Haul.
My thought was estate sale, but I know very little about those. I also thought about yard sale this summer for a lot of smaller stuff and then, when it's time to move, just donating the larger furniture to charity and writing it off on taxes. I thought about donating the smaller stuff and just having a junk company haul the rest away, including the furniture when it's time (but I know that would be the most expensive option and the furniture, while not perfect, isn't junk either). Someone even suggested to me to sell the house "fully furnished" (I am not sure if anyone would really want that though).
Since there are a lot of Realtors here, I figure someone must have some experience with this (or know about the details of what might work). Or maybe someone else here has experience emptying out a house either to downsize or was involved when a relative died and the house needed to be emptied and sold.
In your opinion, what was the best option as far as saving money and ease of ridding oneself of so much stuff?
If I go the yard sale route, I need to start soon since it's now yard sale season.
Thanks!
Here’s what we did. We filled the garage with the things we weren’t taking with us on our long distance move. In fact, that garage wouldn’t hold it all! Value wise I’d say close to ten thousand dollars, give or take. I let it be known to a coworker that she had dibs on anything her or her family could use. This was a single mother who was struggling and I wanted to help her out before we left. So she comes over with a pickup and a trailer and proceeds to take a ton of stuff. Furniture, bedding, dishes, so much stuff I can’t even remember it all.
After asking me if it was ok, she returned the next day with a relative who also took a great deal of the stuff. The rest we gave to the Salvation Army and other charities.
I called a no-kill animal shelter that hosts a garage sale of their own and uses the proceeds to fund the shelter. They brought a van and emptied out the house.
It was a win-win for both parties.
I posted this question. Thanks for the replies! I’ve decided to go the route of donating things. I’ve already done one or two big “purges“ where I threw stuff away that wasn’t worth anything to anyone. I have collected several bins of items to donate to my mom‘s church for their annual bizarre fundraiser.
They actually like a few of my items for the silent auction instead of the “yard sale” part of the bizarre. For example, they really like the Lenox flatware set with handcrafted silverware box that I only used once. Most of the flatware is still in the plastic bags. The value to buy those items new is about $500 so they’re going to put it as silent auction item. They also like for the silent auction some baseball gear that has never been used including brand new the $90 price tags are still on them gloves, a set lof three unused and still wrapped baseballs, two sets of brand new sets of pitchers gloves, and a bag that holds it all plus an aluminum bat. It was a gift given to my daughter when she told someone she really liked baseball. They misunderstood her, she likes watching major league baseball and going to games, not playing the game.
Anyway all that loose kind of stuff I’ve already started bringing to the church because they’re collecting things for the bazaar. They will give me a receipt for them so I’ll write it off on my taxes.
I decided to follow another poster’s recommendation here to donate all the furniture to Habitat for Humanity when the time comes to move. Whatever they can’t take, I’ll call a junk company to come get. Although since I posted this a neighbor actually managed to get a dumpster for his house. It was smaller than the ones I’m used to seeing and I wrote down the company name so I can get some info on the dumpster. I’m hoping I can pay the Habitat for Humanity workers $50 or so each to help me get the mattresses in the dumpsters. Everything else I can throw away on my own.
The bigger pieces of furniture I am keeping willl be moved this December with the help of my boyfriend and my brother and their big pick up trucks. I will also start bringing carloads of other stuff that I’m going to be keeping between December and when I put the house on the market in May.
It’s been interesting planning on downsizing this much. I just don’t need all the furniture, kitchen gadgets, decorations, etc. since I will be moving into my mother’s house to help her. She has all the stuff, and a lot of cases better quality. I will be moving a few things into her house, but I think I’ll essentially be getting rid of 80% or 90% of my belongings before I move.
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