The first part of moving on is realizing that you need to. The about us explains how we came to this realization.
The next part is what to do with all of the stuff. You do accumulate many things over nearly 30 years. Figuring out what to do with it is a big issue. Below is a summary of what we did. Mrs Ram also has a blog post as well.
Feng Shui?
Mr Ram encountered this with one of his customers and Mrs Ram looked into what it really was. After she Feng Shuied several rooms in our house, we found it was useful. However Mr Ram thinks its really just a fancy name for rearranging things and tossing stuff out.
Getting Rid of Stuff
Feng Shui was really our first pass at dealing with the stuff in our lives. Mrs Ram started this a few years before thoughts of hitting the road had really formed in our minds
From there we organized and cleaned each room, the basement, garage, attic. Then we went back room by room and did it again removing anything we weren’t using.
eBay-set up an account and sell all that stuff. It is fairly easy and chats do help. Research some of your ‘junk’ as it might be worth something to someone else.
Craigslist-Good for large items such as furniture which you don’t want to ship. Always be careful of SCAMS. Someone tried to SCAM me on Craigslist by offering to buy my dining room set but then said their ‘agent’ would be by to pick it up but he needed to be paid cash. They ‘said’ they had put money in my PayPal account to cover the cost and the cash but I checked and they did not so I called PayPal and was educated about this SCAM technique. If it doesn’t feel right it probably isn’t.,
Yard Sale in Real Life – we have both been to yard sales and had yard sales. We did not want to sit around all Saturday and Sunday on nice days waiting for someone to offer you $3 for something that is worth much more than that.
Yard Sale Virtual – most towns/cities have Yard Sale sites on Facebook to sell all those odd pieces. You don’t tend to get as much money for your items but they get good homes. We sold the house and had no real valuables left plus we moved items to the garage to avoid dirt being tracked in so we had people come to our actual address. Many people prefer to meet somewhere else and the police departments have video surveillance on designated parking places for those of you who wish to use them.
Goodwill, St. Vincent’s, Savers, etc. – all of them take clothing and shoes. Savers was often more accepting of larger items such as furniture and exercise equipment. Some like the grille, wooden ladders and old cabinets we placed at the curb and people passing by took them. Others like our couch and mattress no one watered so we had to pay our towns waste company to take them
Friends and family – Some things they would love to have like that room A/C, especially if the thermometer is creeping towards 90. Other things they might want but have no place to put. And there there are things you would love them to take but they don’t want.
Keeping Stuff
We continued this process all the way till the end and avoided getting a dumpster and only needed a small 10×10 storage unit for things we couldn’t part with or felt we couldn’t replace.
The cheap side of me wanted to stop at the liquor store and pick up a bunch of liquor boxes to pack things in. However these boxes end up being many different sizes. We settled on using bankers boxes that were the same size with integral lids. They were not cheap but they packed well and you do not loose the lids.
Long Term Storage – When will my stuff end up on an episode of Storage Wars and Why did I keep that?!!
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