Moving and dejunking is exhausting.....any tips?

[Ottakee]

There have been major life changes here in the past 6 months.  I am now single parenting it.  MIL passed away leaving me her stuff.  

We are moving from a 5 bed, 3 1/2 bath 2500sq ft house with daylight basement, 3 stall attached garage, a 30*48 pole barn, and a 30*40 pole barn on 5 acres to a 3 bedroom 1 1/2  bath 1200sq ft ranch with daylight basement and 2 stall garage.

I rented one of those huge roll off dumpsters and have it over 1/2 full already.  We ahve taken load after load after load to donation.  It seems though like I am hardly making a dent in things.

I have all of ex dh's tools, auto repair stuff, tool and die machines, etc as well as personal stuff to all deal with.  He is incarcerated, both his parents are deceased as is his only brother.....so that leaves me.   I will have to see about selling it all off at an auction or on Craig's list, etc.  I know I can get more $ out of it piece meal but that is a lot of work where an auction comes and it is all gone.

Are there any tips for sanity here?  My kids are helpful but all have cognitive impairments so need direction, etc.

[HomeAgain]

How about sympathy?  Can I offer that? Moving sucks. So does decluttering other people's things.  And it sounds like you are under an enormous amount of stress on top of it all. 

My only tips with big jobs is to take pictures every day.  I'm weeding the front yard and it's thousands of horrible little clover plants.  I take a picture because otherwise I look back the next day and feel like I did nothing when I see the large expanse still in front of me.

[cjzimmer1]

Honestly, I think an auction is probably the best way to go. Yes you probably would make more cash piece meal but when you consider the extra effort, time, storage (will you end up staying in the bigger place longer while trying to get rid of stuff?), it probably really does balance out.  Also if you do go the auction route, I probably wouldn't haul more stuff to donation. Let the person who buys those random piles that every auction seems to have deal with it.  Just focus on tossing the true junk and pulling out the things you actually want to keep. It's a lot of work but not any less than trying to donate and sort etc and you will be so glad to just have it all gone in a day or two.

[Annie G]

I’m sorry-you have a lot to deal with.  The emotional upheaval is adding to the overwhelmed feeling, I’m sure. 

What we did: cleaned out one room or a part of the basement to put things- so in your case, clear out a room or a section of the basement or barn to stash the stuff that you’re going to sell. That’s ALL that goes there and when you put something there, it’s done.  We also had a room to put things (boxed!) that we want to keep but don’t need anytime soon. We marked those boxes with contents and put a strip of red tape on them so we know not to open those until we’re moved and settled.. It really helped the decluttering to get that packed away. 

I also schedule a break at 9:30 and 2:30 for myself-30 minutes to sit down and chill out.  Maybe that won’t work for you but it was a lifesaver for me. 

(Hugs). You’re making progress, I promise. 

[Stacia]

Hugs, Ottakee.

[happi duck]

Many (hugs)

From dealing with an estate sale person I've learned that some estate sales are done for people who are downsizing not just after a death.  Also, I've been told not to throw anything away because people will buy even half a roll of tinfoil.

Since you have so much to deal with, iiwm, I'd find an estate sale company now and get their advice.  There should be no cost for them to look and advise you.

[mumto2]

Hugs

[Liz CA]

I knew from your previous posts that there had been significant life changes but this is a big pile to deal with - literally and figuratively.

I would probably go the auction route as well to be done as quickly as possible. Do you have any IRL friends to pitch in with the actual physical work as well as emotional support? A women's group, church, other?

Will your new home offer new possibilities for connecting, i.e. not as rural or more options of participating in certain activities like knitting, crafting, yoga, hiking, etc?

Big Hug!

[Soror]

a ton of hugs

I think I'd make a couple of passes through picking out what I absolutely loved and then just auction the rest. YOu would get more selling it yourself but that takes a lot of time and energy that you don't have to spare at the moment.

Best wishes for peace in this transition and new stage of your life.

Edited August 25, 2018 by soror

[Um_2_4]

I dealt with some of this, my only 3 living relatives (mom, dad and gma), all passed within <24 months of each other and I was left to deal with 2 households worth of stuff at the age of 21.

My advice? Pull out what you want to keep, pack what you can do without right now (maybe put in storage) and then auction or estate sale. I recently heard this advise somewhere (can't remember) to "get what you want to keep" instead of "getting rid of stuff". I am trying to get hubby to do this right now in the garage, put a tarp in the middle walk around and only put on the tarp the things he really wants to keep. Then get rid of everything else, without going through it. Like if you like this set of wrenches, great, stop digging through the pile to "see what other wrenches" he might have. It's not like he uses the tools daily or even weekly. 

Where I lived at the time (and only being 21 and this was early internet days, so no craigslist, etc), I did a month long "house" sale. I advertised everywhere, libraries, etc. I had already packed up the items I wanted to keep and stored them in one room and locked it off, all else was for sale, including the cars. But that took a lot of time and energy, hey, I was young and not working. I did hire a friend for a couple days and paid her some $. For your situation, I would absolutely do an estate sale. THey have their own way of advertising and their own regulars. Tools here sell like hotcakes in estate sales.

And do take breaks. I would close early some days and go grab dinner with a friend or see a movie.

[Bambam]

Many here do living estate sales. They take what they want and leave the rest for the estate sale to take care of. You only get a portion, but at least one here takes care of everything - if there is stuff left, they cart it off to wherever. Not every company agrees to every property though, so check to see if that might be a good option.

My dad simply took what he wanted and the rest, including the house and property, were auctioned off. So easy - probably not the best way to make sure you get the maximum proceeds though.

[lavender's green]

My parents did as much as they could within the time frame they had, including renting a dumpster that they immediately filled, then finally they hired some sort of estate sale place to handle the rest. They are very much alive. It was just the easiest way to handle all the unwanted stuff (and their sanity) on short notice.

Big hugs as you go through this difficult time.

[Ottakee]

Thanks.  I have a few people that can come and look at the tools, etc and advise on those. These are high end precision tools, not just random wrenches, etc so I would want someone who knew what they were doing to handle the estate.

The new house will have access to door to door public bus system for my kids (for 75¢ a ride) as well as access to kayaking where I can put my kayak on a bike trailer and pedel down.  Bike paths just a block away lead to big box stores, a nice small park with beach, etc.  This will allow my kids to be much more independent.....and a lot less driving for me.

 

[Liz CA]

4 minutes ago, Ottakee said:

Thanks.  I have a few people that can come and look at the tools, etc and advise on those. These are high end precision tools, not just random wrenches, etc so I would want someone who knew what they were doing to handle the estate.

The new house will have access to door to door public bus system for my kids (for 75¢ a ride) as well as access to kayaking where I can put my kayak on a bike trailer and pedel down.  Bike paths just a block away lead to big box stores, a nice small park with beach, etc.  This will allow my kids to be much more independent.....and a lot less driving for me.

 

 

I'd love to be that close to water so I can put in my kayak without having to heave it on a roof rack and drive! Sounds like the perfect place for all of you. Congratulations.

Edited August 25, 2018 by Liz CA

[Ottakee]

30 minutes ago, Liz CA said:

 

I'd love to be that close to water so I can put in my kayak without having to heave it on a roof rack and drive! Sounds like the perfect place for all of you. Congratulations.

That was a consideration :-). I would have loved to have been directly on the water (we have waverunners as well) but that would have meant moving 2 hours north to find an affordable area with good amenities.

I will only be 10 minute from Lake Michigan beaches and just a few blocks from other water so I will be OK.

[EMS83]

**lots of hugs**

I'm will everyone who's saying get what you actually want, and dump the rest on someone else to auction off--make keep the special tools and equipment separate and find someone who specializes in moving that stuff (appraisal, resale, auction; idk).  Even if you need to squeeze every penny out; I'd still look at it from that point of view--pack up what you want with you in this next chapter first, then deal with the rest however circumstances allow/force you.  I second breaks, too.  Take a day trip, if it's feasible.  **more hugs**  The new place sounds fun.  ?  

[Melissa in Australia]

 

HUGS

Can the friends who know about precision tools handle the selling of them?

Auction for the rest  sounds great.

[Hannah]

Having a place to look forward to that sounds ideal for you and the kids is a great motivator.  Congratulations on getting it all organized in such an emotional time!  Do you have a deadline to be out of the current house? 

Since you know what the place you're going to looks like, imagine what you want to keep and store in every room and how you want to live in it, and set those items aside.  As previous posters have said, it puts the focus on what to keep, rather than on what to get rid of.

I would categorize items and try to find a specialist for each, i.e. high end tools, auto repair tools, farming equipment, equestrian stuff (if you still have it), household estate and then find a good person to sell each category.  In our area there are equestrian consignment shops and at the auction house, they also have monthly sales for farming equipment where dealers also sell on consignment.  That might also be an option.  It can take long to sell, but at least the things are there, and not in your space.

 

[happi duck]

Some estate sale companies will also do ebay consignment for specialty items that don't sell.

[Ottakee]

Our Target to move to New house is mid November.   The couple I am buying from is waiting for their condo to be finished.   It would be ideal to move.to the new place and then have 2-3 weeks before we had to be out of the current one.  Given this is Michigan though, having a sale in Sept or early Oct is much better weather wise.

New house needs nothing except possibly repainting the LR.  It has a darker sage/forest green on 3 walls and a canyon redrock on the 4th.  I like both colors.....but not sure I want them together.

Flooring is all in great shape but I might want to put down lvp floors through most of main floor as we have a dog, live where there is a lot of snow and my kids are still pretty hard on floors even though they are older.

[EmseB]

I would call an antique shop and explain what you have and see if they know anyone who could come take a look. Even if it's not antiques, sometimes they will know people who might be interested buyers. Advertise on CL for the tools.

My mom was in a similar situation when my grandmother died. All of my late grandpa's professional grade machinist tools were in the garage and she didn't want to just goodwill them because a) she didn't want them to get tossed aside, and b) they were worth a bit of money that was helpful to settling the debts of the estate. She called around and found someone who looked through everything and offered what she thought were fair prices.

But most of it was just a slog. Aside from the tools there was 60+ years of other stuff in that house and no one that had lived there liked getting rid of anything. There were several dumpsters filled, tons of donations, and a lot of people buying things. I know it sucks, but in some ways, you are lucky to be able to make all the decisions yourself about what to keep and what should go. Remember that your time and sanity are worth something too, so if it's too hard to sell something, don't hang on to the idea of getting money from it just because you think it should be worth something. Be free and make liberal use of Goodwill and the dumpster.

[Um_2_4]

ahhh.. if they are specialty tools, those I would look for someone in the trade who might want to make an offer or the trade school idea. I was thinking typical mechanics tools, you know, the basics. 

I had to deal with tons of electronics equipment/computer parts. My parents owned a large computer sales/repair company and when my dad passed suddenly, I was left with a walk out basement full of stuff. I advertised it as a lot sale and someone who had just finished training as a tech came a bought everything. Could I have gotten more if I did it piecemeal? Maybe, but I was on a timeline to settle the estate.

[kbutton]

On 8/25/2018 at 2:16 PM, Annie G said:

What we did: cleaned out one room or a part of the basement to put things- so in your case, clear out a room or a section of the basement or barn to stash the stuff that you’re going to sell. That’s ALL that goes there and when you put something there, it’s done.  We also had a room to put things (boxed!) that we want to keep but don’t need anytime soon. We marked those boxes with contents and put a strip of red tape on them so we know not to open those until we’re moved and settled.. It really helped the decluttering to get that packed away. 

I also schedule a break at 9:30 and 2:30 for myself-30 minutes to sit down and chill out.  Maybe that won’t work for you but it was a lifesaver for me. 

We did something like this with our recent move, and it was really helpful. 

I also recommend that if you can relocate things you want to sort one category at a time all to one space, it can help. Having all the ____ in one place (or having pictures or a list if that's not possible), really helps me make decisions. I know just how many or how much of something I have, decide how much I need, and keep the most suitable items in each category. 

I have also done some of that relocating when we moved in and settled--our new house is drastically different in regard to "public storage" like hall closets, so linens and such had to be stored differently. If I hadn't been able to gather it all in spot, I would've had to rearrange it all about four times to do anything sensible with it. 

If I have extras of anything for daily convenience, but I know I want to be packed up and organized, I try to downsize my daily items. This might mean washing dishes or laundry more often, but it's so nice to have the extra elbow room while packing. For instance, when we moved, I packed up guest towels right away, and I packed up about half of our older towels. I didn't use the towels for packing though--I knew we would unpack slowly, and I didn't want to have them stored for long.

We also tried to put packed items back where they came from--if we had a box of kitchen items that aren't used all that often, we tried to put the boxed up items back into a kitchen cupboard that had been vacated. It kept quite a few of the boxes from being underfoot longer than necessary.

[Rachel]

((((((Hugs!)))))

I knew from other posts you were going through difficult times but I never imagined anything like what you described. I’m sorry!

My husband loves tools, there is a whole tool forum just like this one where people brag about their collections. His suggestion depends on whether you just want everything gone as quickly as possible or if you want to maximize the money potential. 

He said if you want to maximize the money, the best route for the tools is eBay. Put them in sets, use good pictures, and include model numbers. He said depending on how much he has you could turn that into a full time job.

If you just want it gone, call an auctioneer or list it as a lot on Craigslist (include specific higher end items in the listing). Make sure that as part of the deal the buyer takes everything including the boxes. Otherwise they will pick through all the higher end stuff and leave you with the off brand stuff that isn’t worth anything. ETA he says if you do this route you will get approximately 1/4 of what you would get selling on eBay  

Again, I’m sorry you are dealing with this!

Edited August 27, 2018 by Rachel
Added info

[Ottakee]

41 minutes ago, Rachel said:

((((((Hugs!)))))

I knew from other posts you were going through difficult times but I never imagined anything like what you described. I’m sorry!

My husband loves tools, there is a whole tool forum just like this one where people brag about their collections. His suggestion depends on whether you just want everything gone as quickly as possible or if you want to maximize the money potential. 

He said if you want to maximize the money, the best route for the tools is eBay. Put them in sets, use good pictures, and include model numbers. He said depending on how much he has you could turn that into a full time job.

 

Well, maximizing the money would be ideal but there is a limit to how much time I have for this as well.  I might ask dh when the time comes what he wants me to do.  If it is ebay, etc. then I need to get a cut of the money for my time/effort, etc.  I just don't know a lot about these tools and many don't have brand/model numbers on them as they are custom tool making tools.  Then there is the big stuff like welders, drill presses, milling machines, car hoist, generators, etc. that are way too big to ship and I don't know that I want to deal with lots of people coming and going here knowing what else we have in that garage.

I am making it step by step.  I serve a great God and have great friends that have been supportive.  Between 4 times in court in a weeks time and getting the inside of the house ready to sell I am fried.

[Melissa in Australia]

HUGS

[Rachel]

Yeah, selling the big stuff on eBay wouldn’t be ideal. I also get not wanting to deal with people wanting to come out and negotiate for each item. There is a market for that stuff though, so you should find buyers.

It sounds like you have some good friends helping you through this difficult period in life.

When we lost a baby earlier this year, I came across this verse and have held on to it on the hard days: “For though I fall, I will rise again. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light.” Micah 7:8. I’m saying a prayer for you this morning. 

[Mothersweets]

Ottakee ((hugs))