Burn All the Things! {Day 4}

Alternate title for this post: How we got rid of 80% of our stuff in a thrifty and stewardly manner.

Once we had decided to get rid of the majority of our stuff, there remained the question of how to do it without being wasteful.  Obviously the easiest thing would have been to call a company like 1-800-GOT JUNK and have them clean out our house. But - God has blessed us abundantly with our possessions, and we wanted to be conscientious in getting rid of them - we weren't blessed so that we could just turn around and waste that blessing! If you're considering being crazy like us and selling everything, hopefully you'll find this post helpful.

High Value Sales: So my first priority was selling things that I knew had held their value, to companies or individuals that would pay us what they were worth. This included furniture, tools, kids clothes and tech gear that I knew was still valuable. Keep in mind that very, very little is worth what you initially paid for it. As a general rule of thumb, I sold things for a third of their initial value. Here are the companies I used and what I sold to each one.

• Thredup - I've used this company both to sell women's clothing and to purchase, and I've been very happy with both options. Once I knew we were moving, I requested a clean out bag. I filled it with my winter coats, shoes I wouldn't be taking, and my nicer, more professional clothing. It will take a few weeks to find out what I've made off those clothes, but last time I made $20, which I considered a win since women's clothing doesn't resell well.

• Kid 2 Kid - I had SO MUCH kids' clothing. I pretty much had every size, boy and girl. My sisters in law helped me sort through all the clothes and we brought the best stuff to Kid 2 Kid before the moving sale. I made about $16 off what they selected, and put the rest in my moving sale. I brought in another bagful of the best of what was left after the sale, and made an additional $16. Not bad for what essentially amounted to about a large bag of kids' clothes.

• Ebay - I've been a seller on eBay for years, so it wasn't any additional trouble to list a few items on their site. They've improved their listing process making it much simpler, and you only pay if your item sells now. I sold my jewelry supplies, mailers for my photo business, two camera lenses, a DVD set, and two small tech gadgets. I netted about $122.50 after shipping costs from these items.

• Craigslist - I sold a ton on Craigslist. I sold furniture, mattresses, large baby items like our swing, Graco travel system,  and Keilana's crib. I sold most of Lover's tools which sold incredibly fast and for great amounts. I made close to $1,000 by selling individual items on Craigslist. I utilized their "other items by this user" link, and always mentioned in the listing that we were moving. I also asked every buyer if there was anything else they were looking for.

• Facebook Sale Groups - Whenever an item wasn't moving well, especially baby items, I cross listed them in local sales groups on Facebook. I got a lot of interest each time and it was more of a pain to sell through these groups, but it brought me in some additional traffic. My goal was to sell things, so I used all of the resources I could find! I also got lots of traffic at my moving sale by listing the sale on these group sites on the days of the sale. I got lots of parents, especially once we got to Saturday and we were doing fill a grocery bag with kid's clothes for $5.

• Furniture on Consignment - I left three dressers, a cabinet, two wooden chairs, a pair of nightstands, an upholstered chair on consignment in Rochester. As these sell, the store will mail me a check for my percentage of the sale. If they sell well, I could get an additional $400 for these items.

Most Epic Moving Sale - I want to go more in depth about the sale and how it went in another post, so I'll save this for another day. But I netted almost $1700 from our 3 day sale.

Giving Away - We gave away a lot of things. We figured, God has blessed us abundantly, and if we knew someone else would benefit from those things, then we were happy to give them away. We gave lots away to friends and family, and left furniture, curtains and decorations for our friends that are renting from us. I also donated unused toiletries, blankets, towels and men's clothing to Mission Share, a local charity. We dropped off several boxes worth of stuff to Goodwill. All of the remaining kids clothes and our leftover moving sale items went to a foster care children's ministry for the kids they take in and their fundraiser sale next month.

Throwing away - We did throw out quite a bit of stuff that had no resale value, was opened, used or just needed to be thrown away (i.e. I don't want anyone purchasing my old undies!). I'm glad that this amount of stuff was very minimal though.

Burn all the things! And lastly, we did burn something. On our last night in the house, after our open house and the packing was done and everything was finished, we piled up all of Lover's old work shirts in a wooden crate, doused them in lighter fluid and set them on fire. It was a sight to behold. :)