Selling stuff is hard to do
One of the most time consuming things with this whole trip is suprisingly getting rid of all of our stuff. We actually are the type of couple that doesn't buy a lot of stuff and are very focused on living a lean and simple life. Most of the money we spend is on services, food, rent or entertainment. We might buy something 1-2 times a year. Considering that and the fact that we downsized a ton while moving to San Francisco, we are not sure where all this stuff is coming from! It is really hard to get rid of sentimental things or things that were presents (even if you don't like them). We have accumulated a lot of stuff over the years that we just didn't realize.
Our first pass was to make a big goodwill pile of clothes. We went through all of our stuff and put it into a few piles (clothes to bring with, clothes to ship, clothes to store, clothes to sell and clothes to give away). After making the piles we went through them a few more times over the weeks and kept cutting more and more stuff. After giving our roommates first dibs and making a large number of trips to Goodwill, we were down to about 30-40% of what we started with. We also got rid of a bunch of shoes and other weird things like ski clothes. Jen tried to sell some of our "better" stuff to a resale shop and they didn't want a single thing. This was very depressing, so we ended up just giving that stuff to Goodwill also. Sadly, you have to donate like $16,000 or more to get a tax deduction while married and get above the standard deduction for two people, so there really isn't a tax break for donating.
We are very focused on trying to keep all of this stuff out of the landfills, so we will probably end up giving a lot of it away. Jen has been in charge of the whole selling effort as I have been working a ton and she has some time off since her last classes ended Berkeley. We have been focusing mostly on www.craigslist.com for selling and we have sold a ton of stuff for pennies on what we bought it for. It is also depressing selling something you paid $250 for, for like $10. Also the people that come over always want stuff free or for almost nothing and will argue with you forever. Very discouraging and I am almost at the point to just give it all away to avoid having to deal with the drama of it all. We are going to ship a small amount of stuff and store a small amount of stuff, but everything else has to go. When you start thinging about in terms of, it will cost $3000 to store all this extra stuff, and we can buy it new or used for $1000, then even though it has some "value" still, we just don't have enough time and energy to sell it.
We sold a few thing on www.ebay.com and also I sold a bunch of movies and books on www.half.com which is a cool site for listing things like books, movies and CDs. All of the rest of our books we packed for shipping, storing or donated to the local library. I burned all my remaining music CDs to MP3 and made a backup of my hard drive onto another drive for storage. I also have two RAID 1 drives in my computer, so I took one out to bring with on the plain and the other is shipped with the computer in case one breaks.
We still have a lot of furniture to sell including a futon, some wooden saw horse desks, lots of book shelves, a nice filing cabinet, a big chair, a TV, some stereo equipment, lots of Kitchen stuff, tons of old computers, 4 servers, a few monitors, etc.... We have been selling, and giving away stuff non-stop for like 2 months and we still have a full house full of stuff! Hopefully we can sell a few more of the bigger ticket items, and maybe have a friend or two try to sell a few of the things that don't sell. The rest will probably go on the street for a moving sale or more likely just a COME BUY AND TAKE THIS FREE STUFF notice on craigslist.
Matthew
Our first pass was to make a big goodwill pile of clothes. We went through all of our stuff and put it into a few piles (clothes to bring with, clothes to ship, clothes to store, clothes to sell and clothes to give away). After making the piles we went through them a few more times over the weeks and kept cutting more and more stuff. After giving our roommates first dibs and making a large number of trips to Goodwill, we were down to about 30-40% of what we started with. We also got rid of a bunch of shoes and other weird things like ski clothes. Jen tried to sell some of our "better" stuff to a resale shop and they didn't want a single thing. This was very depressing, so we ended up just giving that stuff to Goodwill also. Sadly, you have to donate like $16,000 or more to get a tax deduction while married and get above the standard deduction for two people, so there really isn't a tax break for donating.
We are very focused on trying to keep all of this stuff out of the landfills, so we will probably end up giving a lot of it away. Jen has been in charge of the whole selling effort as I have been working a ton and she has some time off since her last classes ended Berkeley. We have been focusing mostly on www.craigslist.com for selling and we have sold a ton of stuff for pennies on what we bought it for. It is also depressing selling something you paid $250 for, for like $10. Also the people that come over always want stuff free or for almost nothing and will argue with you forever. Very discouraging and I am almost at the point to just give it all away to avoid having to deal with the drama of it all. We are going to ship a small amount of stuff and store a small amount of stuff, but everything else has to go. When you start thinging about in terms of, it will cost $3000 to store all this extra stuff, and we can buy it new or used for $1000, then even though it has some "value" still, we just don't have enough time and energy to sell it.
We sold a few thing on www.ebay.com and also I sold a bunch of movies and books on www.half.com which is a cool site for listing things like books, movies and CDs. All of the rest of our books we packed for shipping, storing or donated to the local library. I burned all my remaining music CDs to MP3 and made a backup of my hard drive onto another drive for storage. I also have two RAID 1 drives in my computer, so I took one out to bring with on the plain and the other is shipped with the computer in case one breaks.
We still have a lot of furniture to sell including a futon, some wooden saw horse desks, lots of book shelves, a nice filing cabinet, a big chair, a TV, some stereo equipment, lots of Kitchen stuff, tons of old computers, 4 servers, a few monitors, etc.... We have been selling, and giving away stuff non-stop for like 2 months and we still have a full house full of stuff! Hopefully we can sell a few more of the bigger ticket items, and maybe have a friend or two try to sell a few of the things that don't sell. The rest will probably go on the street for a moving sale or more likely just a COME BUY AND TAKE THIS FREE STUFF notice on craigslist.
Matthew
Labels: move to new zealand, selling stuff