Are we really doing this? Are we crazy? It’s a reality now, and I’m in freak-out mode. Okay let me go back a few steps and explain…
About a year ago while in the midst of planning our wedding, Kevbot and I starting talking about the desire to leave Nashville. It’s not that we don’t like it here. We actually have really grown to love our cute little home, the amazing friends we’ve made, the beauty in the nature here. It just seems too easy and too routine.
As Belle in Beauty & The Beast sings “There must be more than this provincial life!” and also this “Well, it’s my favorite! Far off places, daring swordfights, magic spells, a prince in disguise.” I need my far off places and daring swordfights…well maybe not swordfights, but maybe some sick WOD’s at a different box every month.
Our plan- sell 90% of what we own, store what we want to keep, and travel the US in our Subaru with our pups for a year!
So we talked about how our plan would be to get married, and the in 2012 pay off debts, declutter our life, and get ready to leave. Now it’s September and it’s all happening. In July we started to set the plan in motion. It was slow, just gathering unwanted things and having a fairly unsuccessful garage sale. But then we got serious in August. I don’t know what it was, we just realized it’s now or never. If we are doing this we have to commit.
Here’s my how to sell your life in order to pursue the unknown:
- Our first step was going through the massive amounts of books and movies we own. We sold a surprisingly large amount of old college text books on amazon. The rest we packed up and took to a local Used Book/Movie store and got about $150 for 2 crates full.
- Step two: go through all clothes. This is beneficial for many reasons. First I have been wanting to update my teenish wardrobe, and start dressing a little more appropriate. Second, I have way too many clothes to tote around the country with me. Three it’s always nice to have extra cash. So I took bags and bags of clothes to Plato’s Closet and while they didn’t buy as much as I’d like, I still got $55 for 16 items. The rest of the pile went into our garage sale pile.
- Next step go through each room and sort out anything that will be for sale. I included anything I knew I could replace later. We want as little to store as possible.
- If you own a house- sell or rent it out. In our case and the economy, it makes me sense to rent and since we won’t be in this state, we didn’t want to act as landlords. So we found an agency that takes care of that. They came out, gave us an estimate price on how much it could rent for, took photos, and our house was posted all over the internet. Two weeks later we have tenants! Crazy, and amazingly lucky it happened so fast.
- In between all that, I was taking photo and posting anything worth more than $50 on Craigslist. Surprisingly it has all sold relatively fast, and we haven’t got murdered by anyone so far.
- Then, have a MASSIVE garage sale. We had ours on Labor Day weekend and I was worried that the holiday would make it a bust. It was the opposite! I posted “Huge Moving Sale” on craigslist, and got everything prepped the night before. We started at 7:00 am although we were ready with signs posted and everything out by 6:30. Also pricing is for suckers! I have spent many hours and tiny colorful stickers pricing items for nothing. Everyone ignores the price and asks you about the arbitrary number anyways, so why not make it up on the spot.
Major success!!! People flooded our garage from 7-9 (prime garage sale time I have found) and we were wrapping it up around 11:00. We made about $300 and this was all on small items (remember my large items were on CL). Also my clothes went like hotcakes. I told everyone $0.50 for shirts, $1 for pants and dresses and $2 for shoes. These were clothes I would have happily dropped in the goodwill bin, and I had never thought about garage selling clothes.
After that I took some more photos of the stuff that didn’t sell like desks that were used to display everything and in 30 minutes someone was here to pick it up. By far the most successful garage sale we have ever had.
“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
And now here we are three weeks later, almost everything in our home is sold, we need to move in 2 weeks, and the universe is on our side. I tell myself “Breath, just breath…now jump!”
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