The Big Sale

It’s time to play catch up on the blog and bring you up-to-date on the goings on in our march to fulltiming freedom. And what a march it’s been!

I might repeat myself here because frankly my mind is muddled and I can’t remember where I left off – something about cleaning my master closet and getting ready for the estate sale.

Ah, yes. The estate sale. I recall saying something about being giddy at the idea that when it was over, our house would be empty and broom clean. hahahahaha! That did not happen. Apparently, in a moment of “frugal-ness” we decided not to check the box in our contract that would have resulted in said giddiness. Nope. Checking that little box would have cost a minimum of $1,000 over and above the percentage the estate sale company takes off the top. So yeah, I guess we had high hopes that everything would sell and that we could easily get rid of what little remained.

That was a pipe dream. While estate sale shoppers will buy anything, they won’t buy everything. After the first day of the sale, when Steven and I returned home, we could not believe the amount of stuff that was still in our house. We both started to panic.

  
PLEASE! Take our stuff!!

We told the estate sale team to do whatever they could to sell stuff. Everything had to go! We sent out messages to friends letting them know they were free to come over after the second day and take anything they wanted for free. And we arranged for Handyman George to arrive with his trash-hauling trailer as soon as the sale was over.

On both days of the sale we took the opportunity to move our things into Scoopy. That was a brilliant decision on our part because it gave us somewhere to go and it was productive. Best of all, it took our minds off the chaos happening at home. By the time the sale was over, we had all but moved in to our new home on wheels. We had envisioned that our move into Scoopy would comprise of unloading everything at once and then trying to unpack as we were living in the rig. Instead, we had loads of time to really organize everything.

“The Chicken” escaped the big sale and now resides happily in Scoopy.

By the end of the second sale day, things were looking up. We returned home to find the majority of stuff gone but the place was trashed. There were still a few treasures left and we were happy that our friends snagged some nice things. The sale team got some good stuff too. We ended up taking four carloads to the donation station, mostly clothes, and George made a few trips to the dump. It was a lot of work but by Monday morning, when the cleaners arrived, we were ready for them.

While the cleaners worked hard getting the house shipshape, Steven took me to the Overlake Surgery Center for a colonoscopy. At first I was cursing myself for scheduling this in the midst of everything we had going on but, to be honest, I needed the rest. It was like a freakin’ vacation to be knocked out for a while. All went well and by late afternoon, after scarfing down a huge burger on the way home from the hospital, we returned to an almost-empty and better-than-broom clean house. Giddiness ensued (no surviving photos of the colonoscopy for the blog, sorry).

  
Almost empty. The end is near!

I say “almost empty” because we still had all of Zac’s stuff that we’ll be moving to Bellingham. Most of his stuff was moved to the garage and he just set up a little living area for himself out there. On top of everything else, Tara’s car had just been shipped to her new apartment in San Diego. The shipping company allows up to 400 pounds of “cargo” in the car so she stuffed everything she cared about in there. We also had another pile to bring to Scoopy. And, we still had a few crates of documents to go through. As much as we dread going through all those documents, time was now on our side. Kinda.

  
Tara pines at the temporary loss of her car.      Zac sets up shop in the garage.

We’ve had a few folks ask us if we were happy with the results of our estate sale and if it was worth doing. For us, given our particular situation, yes and yes. Our goal was to get rid of everything in that house without having to pay someone to haul it off. So in that regard, it was a complete success.
Still, it was kind of hellish. More on that later.

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UP NEXT: Estate Sale – Final Thoughts

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