[Oxankle]

Did you ever think about moving all your junk after living on a place for what seems like forever? I've been on this place for 19 years. Came here with nothing but a city coupled trappings, not even a riding lawn mower. Now I've spent the last two weeks hauling off what is of so little value that it will not pay to advertise. Stuff like bent fence posts, short pieces of six inch pipe, pieces of aluminum plate, lead I melted out of old batteries, spools of old copper well wire that have breaks in the insulation.

Today I hauled off what I thought was the last load. I came back, rode by the barn and spotted an old 14 foot aluminum ladder that I replaced when I became afraid of it (275# limit when I weigh 237) and several lengths of angle iron. I also spotted a half dozen 5/8 inch sucker rods, but they'll stay--I'm out of oxygen and I won't drag a trailer for a hundred pounds of steel.

Time now to start selling the useful things. Fellow coming in the morning to get my log splitter.

There is an auction house near here, sale every Saturday. I sold some things there not long ago and found that they have a 35% commission. I thought that a bit high, but they seem to be very successful. I've seen the sign there for the past many years. Small wonder the fellow offered to sell my log splitter for me.

 

[Laura Zone 5]

Ox I am doing that 'downsizing thing' now.......
25 years total, but 11 years in this place......lots of STUFF.
Getting down to the nitty gritty.
Packing boxes, but marking them with an "X" so that when I haul it out of storage to put in the moving truck....I can determine if it REALLY needs to go......

Live and learn.
Less stuff.....definitely, less stuff.

 

[Ramblin Wreck]

35% commission? Wow, that seems way high. Here they usually charge a small commission to the seller and often a buyer's premium too, which can be as high as 10%. Now they add sales tax too, so you need a calculator when bidding to make sure you are staying in line with reality.

Good luck to both of you with your downsizing.

 

[Terri in WV]

I got rid of a boat load of stuff when I moved from the 2200sf to this 1400sf. I will be getting rid of a lot of stuff when I move from here to the place I just bought, even though it's 3800sf.

After walking in to the new place with a lot of the 30 years of accumulation left behind it really hit me. I don't want to leave that kind of mess for my kids to deal with. I am now waiting for them to finish cleaning it out so that we can move.

I know though, that I will have trouble trying not to clutter everything up, but I know darn well that I will never leave it like the former couple did!

 

[Terri in WV]

Oh, and 35-40% commission is pretty common anymore.

 

[Oxankle]

Terri: At 35% Craigslist is a welcome alternative. My log splitter will bring the best part of a thousand dollars. Thirty-five percent of that is more than an auctioneer's time is worth. An old vegetable slicer, OK, my log splitter,no.

 

[Forcast]

yep did it as well the auction man made out good i got little, wont do that again. 35% and they charged me for hauling as well. It all sounded good at the time not so much when I got the check. So with what left I just decided that since i had to deal with my parents 80 years of crap I would pass the experience on to the next generation.

 

[COSunflower]

I've lived here 41 years and have been downsizing and getting rid of stuff for the last 10 years and FINALLY feel like I'm almost there!!! I keep finding that I can do with less and less and less....When my home storage sheds are completely empty except for tools being used and the house is only holding what I actually NEED and USE...then I will feel like I'm done.

 

[simi-steading]

My wife and I moved to DC with almost nothing 9 years ago..

We spent all our time doing estate sales and craigslist and filled a 4 bedroom house, a full basement and a two car garage and an outbuilding.. Funny thing.. most of it we ended up bringing out here.. Lots of tools, lots of cooking and canning kinds of stuff, things you need in the country... We just bought it because we liked i or wanted it.. Not because we knew we'd move to the country..

Then we bought a lot that we bought to resell and flip.. then we kept stuff we just liked..

So then we bought this place and moved a lot of that out here with us.. Still; reselling on Etsy too..

I made three 600 mile round trips just moving the garage stuff.. In a 14 foot trailer and the truck... made 4 trips moving the house, one of those trips with a 20' U-Haul, and we made lots of other trips just to come out here getting the place ready, but still brought a lot those times.. Heck, one trip was just bringing all my albums and ammo out here in the trailer... Weighed almost as much as when I loaded up the tractor in it and brought it out..

We did our own indoor "Moving Estate" sale.. we made a WHOLE lot of money selling good things, and selling a lot of things we felt were worthless.. We'd charge a buck for something we were going to throw out or donate.. amazing the trash others bought.. It paid for a lot of materials to fix up this place, the moving expenses, and help from some friends..

Don't sell your junk short.. but yes... it's a real drag dealing with all your junk...

 

[Terri in WV]

Well, Semi, you made me feel a bit better.

I used two 26' trucks to move here and that was after I got rid of a bunch. The second truck wasn't quite filled to the top though. It took a large portion of one just to move all the quilt stuff.

 

[Laura Zone 5]

My goal is to move everything in ONE moving van.
When I die, my other goal is that it will take the kids ONE DAY to clean out my entire house (if they so choose).
I have always been a 'purger'.....and living with a pack rat for so many years, has been a challenge.
Now that it's just me? I am hoping to reach both of my above goals!!

 

[Oxankle]

I feel better about the whole mess now. Seems like I'm not the only "accumulator".
Ox

 

[sidepasser]

Ox - it took me almost three years to downsize my farm. I spent a lot of weekends driving 5 hours to Ga. to load up my truck, or car and bring stuff to my house to go through and either store or sell/donate.

When I finally sold the farm in November of 13, ..I still had four weekends of nothing but sorting to do and still left a pile of stuff at the barn for the new owners. I accumulated a LOT of stuff in 26 years.

Now I am down to one 10 x 12 storage unit of stuff I refuse to part with, i.e. my wood cookstove, and things of that nature. Maybe one day I will have another farm house and will move that stuff into it.

My kids though will never have to spend weeks going through my "stuff" after I pass on. However, my mom is of a different sort. 3 houses and one is slam full from basement to attic with "stuff". It will take months to go through all that. She refuses to downsize anything.

 

[Everett57]

:shrug: well im sorta in same boat, after my dev i threw everything in storage, she just walked out in middle of night, 4 days too pay rent , and no money , i had money for a storage 10x21 , so i threw all the good stuff in there, threw all the rest on the curb , furniture , gas stoves , stuff like that , and that was 06 , then i got a job up here at 110 miles north of there, and while was working there i was sorting out getting rid of stuff, meanwhile still pay rent on it, since 06 , then like i said got a new job , 110 miles north and just send her the payment and go down on weekends and bring a load back,more sorting, , but what i do is i donate most stuff here , to what is the market place , a local thrift shop , that's teaches the handicap kids a job trade, they go thru the stuff , get ready for sale, i left a a 10 in a jeans pocket he found it , i told him he can keep, his supervisor said no, it has to be return to the owner , as i left i put in the donation jar on the counter so that's what i been doing , its real easy to get caught up in projects too, like say o i will buy this piece of iron, i got a idea, well 15 years latter ,still stitting there and you forgot what you was gonna do with it, is my problem now :shrug:

 

[Everett57]

Wondering if anybody seen the shows hoarders that's what i feel like when i look into my storage unit and ask why me

 

[Oxankle]

Everett; I remember why I bought the stuff, but I never got around to most of it. I bought a 32 foot piece of six inch pipe, intending to cut it into posts and weld up corners. It brought ten cents per pound. Typical.

To all of you who rent storage spaces--are you paying for sentiment or the value of the "stuff" inside? Does not take long for the rent to buy all your precious things. Only sentiment can account for some of this.
Ox

 

[Terri in WV]

I've been paying for a storage unit for the last year, $55 a month.

I had only planned on it being 1 month. I was in the process of buying a house when a wealthy woman died and they sold her stuff at auction. I made a special trip to attend. I bought 2 complete bedroom suites for $1200. The mattresses alone are valued in the $4,000-$5,000 range, each. As near as I could figure, everything totaled to around a $15,000 value.

The deal fell through on that house, but even with what I paid at auction and what I've paid on the storage, I still wouldn't have been able to afford that quality of mattress.

 

[Oxankle]

Bless yo heart, Child. Only a princess can tell the difference between a $500 mattress and a $4,000 mattress once the sheets are on. I sure hope no mouse decides to make a nest in that mattress while it is in the storage unit. Go put some mouse bait in that unit quick.
Ox

 

[Terri in WV]

Ox, Having traveled a lot and stayed at relatives quite often, there is definitely a difference in quality with the price. I had never had the opportunity to try high end mattresses until that sale. I knew as soon as I tested it that it was going to be mine.

While I'm not a princess, I do have to watch what I'm sleeping on and how I sleep. I was born with double hip dysplasia and as I age, sleeping gets harder. It also doesn't help that I've had two ruptured disks either. Since I got rid of my waterbed I have taken to sleeping on the couch or in a recliner as that offers better sleep than a regular bed. A couple of days on a hard mattress will knock a hip out and leave me walking with a cane and a hip that feels like it's grinding glass.

 

[elkhound]

yall are better than me...i cant get rid of it..certain things yes..homesteading stuff i use to live my daily life..no way...and certain junk...it is worthless to others..but it has value in my eyes that only i see or can see or wanna see..i.e. a pair of straightrazors in a half rotten leather roll up pouch....my great great grandaddy carried in civil war as a horse soldier....it deserves a place of honor for my viewing(they were made in england and still can be used to shave with)i often wonder why carried two of them....my families crosscut saws and axes and little do dads my grandaddy saved and how he saved it....i guess i am a weird person...but when i ramble in shed i find an old coffee jar half full of cushaw seed and my mind wonders to a place where i see him gardening and putzeing around...or i find the improved muskrat knife...a real shrade walden worth a decent bit at time he gave me to skin fur with .