Here we go - "stuff-free"!
Elaine and I decided at the end of 2010 that the market for home sales was not going to recover soon and we needed to sell the one we had. We had bought a motorhome in 2006 and had planned to sell the house at the end of 2007, but prices started dropping so we thought we would wait for them to recover. Huh!
Now to the stuff:
We have moved several times in the past and remember having boxes of stuff five years after the move that we had never even opened, so we knew that keeping stuff was not worth it. We carefully selected items such as family photos, memorabilia, etc, and packed them in boxes and are storing those at a family member's home. Only about a dozen boxes of that.
We have spent considerable time living in our motorhome (6 months in 2006, 8.5 months in 2007) so we knew what we needed for living there and moved that out to the motorhome. We moved into the motorhome at that point.
Then we hired an estate sale company to do an estate sale. They organized it, advertised it, handled it for two days, and took 25% commission for their work. Well worth it. Yard sales would have taken much effort and we would have prolonged the pain of parting with special items. We sold furniture and everything at the estate sale, but still had much left over, which we donated to Goodwill. Made almost $10K at the estate sale and will take almost $5K in charitable deductions for the donations. Hauled some to trash as well.
At this point we have the house under contract, expecting it to close late next month.
