Learning About Estate Sales

Ever since I signed on the dotted line for the RV I have been on a mini roller coaster of emotions. Like the kiddie ride kind, not the Texas Giant kind.  Some days I'm so excited and I want to move in right now.  We own it, let's go live in it.  Then other days I look at something I am going to have to sell and think...what am I doing?  I love my vacuum cleaner.

Isn't she beautiful.  

We have decided to sell everything via an estate sale.  Yes, I could dedicate my life for the next month and a half to sorting, posting, craigslisting, garage selling everything myself.  But I have things to do.  Like find office space for my counseling practice, sort through things I want to keep, celebrate some major holidays...and oh yeah...work for a living.  So we decided the cost of hiring the selling of our stuff out was going to be worth it.

See...that's me and like most people, I have a lot going on.

I have learned much in the last week about Estate Sales.  Not near enough I'm sure, but I'm much more educated on the process than I was a week ago.  I've learned things like:

1.  There are many ways to take advantage of the customer in this business.  When you break it down, I'm inviting complete strangers into my home, they are going to sort all my stuff, they get to price it themselves, they will then sell it all and then they will inform me of the total and how much I get after their take.  Plenty of room for dishonesty.  And I understand that I do not have nice stuff, I will not be making a ton of money.  But this is all I have, I would like it to be taken care of in the best way possible.

2.  Even though you don't own really cool antiques, you can have an estate sale.  I expected the companies to come in and laugh at my stuff.  Nope...they tell me even half used bottles of shampoo will sell.  Who knew?

Sadly this is not my house...look at the goldmine they have sitting there...cha-ching!!

3.  Some companies are much snootier than others.  My house is messy.  (One of the main reasons I'm downsizing...keeping a big house clean is not on my priority list.)  You can walk through it without tripping in most places.  I tried to clean up the cat puke off the floor before they came...you know, the basics.  Some companies have smiled, told me to just move out and leave everything messy...they will take care of it for us.  Some have looked around and wrinkled their nose, apparently irritated that they had to step over the pots in the hallway that catch the rain because our landlord won't fix the roof.  Guess who is going to get our business.

"Dahling...your stuff is not worthy of my services."

I actually like this print...I need to research who drew it.

One of the reasons I have so much stuff is because I can always find an excuse to keep it.  "I got that cooler when I worked as a lifeguard at age 16, I've kept it this long, it would be a shame to throw it out."  "You never know when you are going to need purple fabric with orange flowers on it."  "What if someone wets the bed...then I will be glad I have 3 extra sets of sheets in every size on hand."  

It's much easier for me to part with something when I know that it's going to someone who can use it or I can sell it.  So an estate sale is the perfect solution for me.  Everything is going to have a chance to be sold.  And then a donation truck is going to stop by and pick up the leftovers.  I don't even have to throw away a perfectly good half bottle of shampoo I tried and hated.  How awesome is that!!

What I'm going to miss

I'm expecting to miss some parts of living in a house.  I wanted to post about them so I could look back in 6 months and see how accurate or off I was.

Here is what I expect I will miss in no particular order:

1.  My washer and dryer.  I have always wanted a nice set and we got them this past January when we moved into this house.  The RV has room for a washer/dryer combo until that can hold about 3 pairs of socks.  Hopefully washing clothes at the laundry mat isn't too awful.  I'm going to miss being able to "iron" Ryan's clothes in the dryer every morning.

2.  Parking my car in the garage.  Ever since the hail storm in 2011 that demolished both of our cars I have wanted to keep my car safe in the garage.  Plus it's a bonus on cold days like today.

3.  The ice and water in the fridge.  Our fridge will be much smaller.  That I can deal with, but I'm going to miss having ice and water pop out of the front of the fridge at my convenience.  

4.  The garbage disposal.  I can't remember the last time I didn't have one of these.  I wonder how many times I'm going to accidentally put something down the drain that I'm not supposed to.  

That is all I can come up with right now.  Here are some things I won't miss:

1.  My huge rent payment.

2.  Taking care of and storing stuff that I don't need or want.

3.  $300+ electric bills

4.  The impossible task of getting the entire house cleaned at one time.

5.  The feeling that every time I sit down I should be doing something to upkeep the house instead.

6.  Yard work

7.  That feeling that I should decorate my house super cute, but don't have the budget or drive to do so.

8.  The stress of how am I going to pay my bills when my client load is down this month.

9.  Having to go upstairs 6 times in the morning to be sure the kids are awake.

10.  Having to yell up to the kids when dinner is ready.  

I'm sure there are more for both lists.  But it's a good start I think.  What do you think you would miss most if you drastically downsized?

Where are we now?

So here is a quick snapshot of our thought process over the last two months.  

We really wanted that park home.  We checked out the local RV parks.  They vehemently let us know that we could not put a park home in an RV park.  Something about the size, the fact that it doesn't have RV hookups, etc.  But they own the park, they get to set the rules...even if I don't like it.

We looked at buying land to put one on.  We found that the local ordinances will not allow us to do that.  We live in suburbia...we cannot be putting such rubbish on our property :)  

(Hideous isn't it) :P

We forgot about it for a while when we got busy with life.

We thought about moving to an apartment instead.  After visiting several complexes we have learned that after renting an apartment capable of housing the 4 of us and finding me an office we will be spending the same or more money each month.  Unless we moved into the one complex that looked like drug deals were going on all over the place.  I'm not willing to go there.

We briefly considered living in a mobile home park.  When I really thought about the environment of a mobile home park versus an RV park I suddenly realized that I would enjoy the atmosphere of an RV park more.  I think we would get to meet interesting people and learn about living on the road in an RV which is our eventual goal.  

We started thinking outside the box.  How could we make an RV work?  As I started looking at floor plans I got to thinking how this could be possible.  We came up with an idea and talked to the kids about it.  They were of course a little hesitant, but did not object.  We found something that looked like it would work.  

So we went to check this particular RV out.  It didn't feel right in my gut, but we put down a deposit.  It fit all our needs, I just thought I was needing to look around more because that is how I function.  I need to feel like I have done my homework.  

A couple days later we went to check out the exact same model of RV, it was just a lot less expensive.  It was too beat up for our needs.  But....they had new models on the lot and we found the perfect one.  And this one felt much better to my gut.  A day later and we now own (or the bank owns for us) an RV.  The process was scarily easy to complete.

So now...all we have to do is decide what we are going to keep, sell all our stuff, figure out which RV park we want to live in and find an office for me.  By the beginning of January.  Not to mention keep on working and doing all the usual holiday stuff.  It's exciting, scary and overwhelming at once.