have you ever sold off EVERYTHING and started over?

[rookie]

we will probably move this year and i really want to get rid of EVERYTHING and start with a blank canvas. have you done this? if so, how did you sell your possessions? what did you keep? what do you wish you would have kept because you did need it right away? if you were going to do this how do you think you would choose differently for your next home?

[Garga]

Never done it, but I've daydreamed about it a lot.

[Audrey]

Yes. I did that when I moved up here. I'm glad I did.

 

Also, when I was growing up, Dad was in the Navy, and I remember a couple of times where we sold the entire contents of the house, plus the cars and started over in the new place. I know we kept clothes and toys, though, but that was pretty close to a clean slate. I think my mom kind of liked the fresh start idea, but she had an adventurous spirit which I think helped. :)

 

I'll bet you'd find many a military family who has had more recent experience with this kind of thing.

[Willow]

Yes, when we emigrated.

 

One the one hand it was great (we kept a trunk for each kid, to be filled with what they wanted) on the other hand, replacing the stuff was MUCH more expensive than we anticipated.

[MindyD]

We might be moving soon and I've been thinking about kind of doing the same thing. Not selling everything, but everything that I don't love. So our couch we bought last year is moving, but the TV cabinet would be sold. If we do end up moving, we will be having a LARGE moving sale to get rid of as much as we can. I don't want to move all our junk across the state!

[Cinder]

Never done it, but I've daydreamed about it a lot.

 

Yes, me too. Mostly when I'm aggravated with the clutter.

 

 

Cinder

[JoyfulMama]

My grandmother did this a few years ago when she moved to a new state, and significantly downsized. She had a local company come in who did an estate sale. They priced everything, and took care of the whole event, including marketing before hand. I know they had options for the things that weren't sold, and my grandmother chose for them to take it all for a price to make things easier on her. She made a good bit of money!

[Food4Thought]

Never done it, but I've daydreamed about it a lot.

 

:iagree:Me too.

 

I do know of one family that lost everything in a flood, but had good insurance. They replaced everything with things they truly wanted. She said it was a liberating experience (although filled with grief as well).

 

My brother and family are military - during one of their moves across the ocean, they were without everything for almost a month. My SIL says she missed the couch and her cooking supplies the most.

 

The estate sale sounds like a good way to go.

[nd293]

I have (mostly) done it, wished I've done it, and wondered WHY I've done it!

 

We moved from South Africa for expat work with very little - no furniture, just books and toys, some kitchen stuff and some ornaments. We sold some furniture, but gave away most of it, either to family or to charitable organisations.

 

We emigrated to Australia with most of our stuff - now, after 18 months, we are moving into our own home, and lots of things will be replaced for various reasons.

 

My thoughts:

 

1) Starting over without stuff really brings home how unimportant things are. Even a few things we thought were sentimentally important and left with my mother have now mostly been discarded.

2) Think carefully before discarding books - I have so many books I wish I had kept. Now that we are settled (we have a home-country, even if we move again) I want to start collecting some titles I remember leaving behind.

3) Make sure everyone is onboard. I think moving is hard enough for kids without leaving ALL their stuff. And 6 years, 2 countries and 5 houses later, dh and I still occasionally get snappy about the move from SA when he failed to sort his stuff out prior to the move, so I did it, and got rid of stuff he wanted!

4) I wish I'd more assiduously kept something special to represent each place we've lived. Less stuff is good, yes, but sometimes stuff can be a physical link to memories (good and bad, I suppose).

5) Don't underestimate how overwhelming it is to shop, especially when you're under pressure to get it done, and don't know the shops. Our first move was to a furnished unit where we lived for one year. In that time we were slowly able to replace some things, so when we moved into an unfurnished place, it was much easier. We also knew the shops by then - where to find what, and where to get the best deals.

6) The younger your kids, and the less support you have, the more I'd think this through carefully. When we moved to Australia I took most things, but still found that I was at the shops frequently replacing items I thought "too silly" to bring to another continent. Brooms and toilet brushes may be silly, but they are necessary! My ds, then 2yrs, did not cope well with the frequent, chaotic shopping expeditions. He entered a period of massive "tantrums" and "meltdowns", and I still feel very badly about how hard it was on him.

 

I hope to slowly buy up some furniture I really really love now, and then if we move overseas again we will store furniture, rather than get rid of it.

 

Good luck with it all!

 

Nikki (moving into her very own home next week)

[jld]

I met and moved in with dh pretty young (22/23) and really didn't have a clue what quality was. I wasted money on cheap and used furniture which I eventually gave away. I bought toys and other things at garage sales that the kids got at least somewhat attached to, and I really regret that, as it is harder to give them away now. Dh tried to teach me about quality, but all I could think was price, as that's how I grew up. I really wish my parents had known better so I could have learned better from them. I also wish I had just listened to dh at the beginning instead of insisting on doing things my uninformed way. Oh, well. Live and learn.

 

Fast forward 13 years. When I was 36, we moved to France, leaving everything except some clothes and toys and books at our house in America. The company gave us a little over $20k to outfit our apartment in France, and this time I bought more intelligently. We bought a leather sofa and chair (not high quality, but decent, and moderately-priced, surprisingly), a good, solid wood table and chairs (I like my chairs in America better, but these aren't terrible), and decent mattresses for everyone's bed. I also bought wooden bookshelves, and wish I had bought more (dh thought we had enough, lol)! I bought quality sheets and towels from a good store. We bought quality pots and pans (the ones in America are from my brother from 30 years ago, lol -- they will be replaced soon), utensils, and pretty dishes, and pretty good appliances. I really aimed for quality, sometimes buying less, but buying something good. We did go over the budget and had to kick in some of our own money, and it was worth it. I regret the things we bought towards the end, when the company money was running out, because I gave in to price concerns instead of putting quality front and center.

 

Note: We didn't go to Ikea. I have bought things from Ikea in America, because it's cheap, but I don't like what I've bought. I'm sorry if this sounds like an Ikea slam, but it's how I see it. Please, it's just an alternative, minority opinion, undoubtedly wrong. And I probably just bought the wrong things.

 

We ended up moving to India from France, and I'm glad we have the things here we do, because it can be a challenge finding quality in India.

 

I really regret not knowing quality when I was a young adult, and not buying it right off. Otoh, it's helpful to know when medium or even low quality is good enough, and it's okay to be satisfied with that. And I still am clearly not a quality expert; I've just improved a lot from 18 years ago, lol.

[AnitaMcC]

we will probably move this year and i really want to get rid of EVERYTHING and start with a blank canvas. have you done this? if so, how did you sell your possessions? what did you keep? what do you wish you would have kept because you did need it right away? if you were going to do this how do you think you would choose differently for your next home?

 

This is what we will do when we move to NY. I plan to only keep a few things...

 

...hutch that was my grandmother's, my china that my dad gave my mom before I was born (he got it when he was in the Navy and went to Germany), my curio cabinet, kitchen table and chairs, my roll top desk, my other desk that the kids use, computer desk that is excellent quality/condition, and some book cases. That is it for big stuff. I will buy all new furniture for living room and bedrooms. The rest... kitchen items, clothes, towels, paintings (that my uncle and great aunt have painted), odds and ends... I will keep most of it as I have already weeded out the excess and kept only what I truly want to keep.

 

One of my favorite ways to get rid of stuff is get mad at kids/Dh-LOL. I get rid of a lot of stuff then.

[Tap]

When we moved to where we live now, we sold off everything except what would fit in a UHaul. We brought our appliances, some furniture and kids items. We sold at least half of our belongings. We only lived in a 1000sqft house (nothing in storage), so we didn't have much to start with. LOL I wish we could do it again.

[KidsHappen]

About 1 year after my hubby got out of the military, we woke up one morning and said, "Hey, you want to move to SLC?" We got rid of everything that wasn't a bare necessity, rented a truck, packed it that night and was on the road the next morning. Of course, that was when we were young and crazy and only had two small children and not very much stuff. I am sure it would be much harder today.

[rafiki]

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