Though the last three months have felt interminable, our never-ending saga of downsizing is at long last coming to an end. Unlike the magician’s hat when he keeps pulling rabbits out, we are finally running out of things to sell or give away.

The house is so empty it looks like some of the hostels we’ve stayed in over the years – there’s enough to cover the basics, but there’s a feeling of emptiness and the rooms echo. There’s no life or personality left.

We do have furniture, but what’s left is the junk stuff that’s going to the curb on closing day, or it’s the ‘higher end’ antique furniture we have for sale. The only things remaining in the closets and cabinets are items that will be packed at the last minute and put into storage.

In late August I reached my limit with seeing the FreeCycle items stacked up near the front door (yes, I admit, I got downright cranky) so I spent a long morning writing the ads to post the items. Much to our amazement and delight, every item was picked up in six hours.

That seemed to renew the energy around getting things out the door. We finished corralling and cleaning all our yard and shed items and posted ads for them; we combed through all our remaining furniture and cabinets, cataloguing items and postings ads; we looked at smaller pieces of furniture we thought we’d be willing to sell and posted ads; we took another look at clothing and posted a few more items.

On a gorgeous, windy and cool sunny Saturday in September we held our final, final, final garage sale, talked into it by two neighbors who were each having a yard sale. The weather was so beautiful that sitting outside quietly was a welcome break, and we had so few items to sell that we weren’t busy. We did well though, since the items were all “higher end”, so even though we sold only a few items, we made as much as we did in our prior yard sales.

We posted some last minute things on CrazyGuyOnABike a month or so ago, finally shipping off the last items yesterday.

Craigslist still has quite a collection of our ads, but they are all smaller items now (except for the antique furniture), and if we have to FreeCycle them we won’t be heartbroken.

We’ve had so many items posted on Craigslist over the last few months that it’s become a game when Chelsea’s phone lets her know there’s a message. We both perk up, looking interestedly at each other, guessing, “It’s someone who wants the…juicer! No…the… kitchen hutch! Hey, maybe someone wants the sideboard!”

We’re thrilled when it’s a response to an ad; not so excited when it’s only a notification of a Facebook posting or Barnes and Noble offering us a good deal on the latest best sellers.

Working the selling system

Perhaps the toughest part of selling, and what wears us out the most, is the work necessary to sell the items.

It didn’t take long to figure out that writing a great ad brings in sales much faster than a flat, dry ad, and the items have to be priced correctly. The ad has to be lively, friendly, and informative. That means we have to accurately describe everything, figure out a decent price, have good photos, and write the ad in an easy-to-read style.

Sounds straightforward, right? It is. But the time needed to accurately describe the things we are selling is absolutely amazing (what is it? what does it do? what condition is it in? what size is it?). Then we need to research online to find out what other similar items are selling for so we can decide how to price it to sell quickly. That’s another big time sink.

Before we can post it, we need to take decent photos. Somehow it’s always a total pain in the patooty. The size looks off; the colors just aren’t right; it’s fuzzy and who knows why since the others were clear. Grrr…. Then there’s a limit on the number of photos, so each photo has to be very descriptive. (We finally figured out a clever way around the photo limits – we did collages of two to four photos in one, so we could get up to eight photos in only two that are allowed; very proud of ourselves on that one.)

After all the prep work Chelsea posts everything, sometimes in several places. Then if things go as planned, we have to handle phone calls and emails from buyers.

Some of the buyers are total sweethearts, others are clueless. Some write and say, “I want it, I’ll be there in an hour”. Others write back and forth for three days, make an appointment to come and see it, saying they are going to buy, and never show up, ne’er to be heard from again. Still others write back and forth, and after missing several appointments without explanation, finally show up and buy.

After things sell, we have to go on each location and mark the ads as sold.

It’s enough to make a sane person crazy.

One thing we have enjoyed is meeting the characters from FreeCycle and Craigslist. The overwhelming preponderance of them have been incredibly nice.

I sold my older Oakley sunglasses, thinking it was really a long shot that I’d get anything.
The morning the ad came out we got a call from a guy who said he’d be here in a few hours. Sure enough, a thirty-something professional guy sailed in, talked almost non-stop about Oakleys, handed over the money, and sailed out.

I couldn’t believe how knowledgeable he is about Oakleys. I learned some good tips, like the fact that some sunscreens and bug sprays will pit the surface of the lenses badly, so special care needs to be taken to keep them away from the lenses. Now I know what happened to my old lenses…

Again, wondering who on earth would want a hundred-year-old pair of plain nightstands, we got an email from a guy who popped in only an hour or two after getting in touch with us, looked them over for three minutes, said, “I have been diligently looking for exactly this for over eight months”, paid, and walked them out to his car. He was a professional photographer, and gave us good tips about cameras, answering some questions we had.

A truly delightful lady from a local brain injury institute bought my LL Bean soft shell jacket. We spent at least a half hour talking about various subjects, especially telling her about Chelsea’s incredible recovery from her brain injury.

Luis and Luiz are from Peru and Brazil, respectively; they bought an old couch we had. They asked if we would sell it for ten dollars less than advertised, but I told them we need the money for food and bills till we finish writing and some income kicks in, so they gave us five dollars over the sales price, and we then talked about South America for almost two hours.

My oversized desk went to a young couple from Miami. I’d been wondering who would want such a big desk, despite how efficient it is, but it turns out the guy edits film professionally, so the extra space is invaluable to him for the extra monitors he needs. I was thrilled; he was thrilled. Plus, he gave me some incredible tips on what video cameras to get.

Our kitchen table went to a woman who runs a well-respected yoga center in Fort Lauderdale. She’s also opening a new shop for “Books and Fabulous Finds for Food Lovers” called The Thousand Pound Egg. You can check out their Facebook page. Karen needed the table for displays in her new shop.

One of the funniest deals we did was with a guy who wrote that he was interested in our coffee table from the Czech Republic. He simply wrote, “Interested in…” and gave his number. When I called and identified myself he said, with no introduction or prelude, “I’ll offer thirty dollars.” I told him, no, wasn’t worth it to me for that, but I’d take fifty. He said, “Okay, I’ll have a guy there today or tomorrow”.

Turns out he owns a home in the Bahamas which was recently ruined in one of the hurricanes. He had just discovered Craigslist and was like a kid in a candy store. His primary home is in Tampa/Clearwater, so he sat on the phone calling on ads, then lined up a buddy of his in this area to drive around and pick up what he’d bought, then drive the goods to the port of Miami, where they would be shipped across to the Bahamas.

The guys showed up here as promised. Two young guys carried the table out to the rented truck while the “boss” handwrote a receipt for me to sign. They were in and out in five minutes, leaving us laughing.

Then there was the twenty-something guy who bought our two-burner propane stove and was thrilled, wanting to use it the next day. Early the next morning he was on email to Chelsea telling her a piece was missing and would we look for it. We felt terrible of course, but finding the mysterious missing part would be like a needle in a haystack, especially since the last time we used the stove was at a campground in northern California in September 2006.

After a few go-arounds, with us feeling increasingly discouraged, he wrote back and said, “Oops, I should have just tried it. It works perfectly, thanks.”

Perhaps the funniest of all were the two guys who bought our crystal cabinet. After going back and forth by email, we finally agreed on a price. They set Monday to come pick it up; Chelsea made sure as usual to give the address and to ask if they needed directions or if they’d use a GPS.

Monday arrived and we waited all day to hear from them. Mind you, they were driving from Fort Meyers, which is on Florida’s west coast, at least a three-hour drive from here. Finally, about four in the afternoon, they sent Chelsea a text message asking for directions from I75. We looked at each other in astonishment. They had apparently just gotten on the road and had no directions and no smart phone and no GPS.

Have you ever tried sending complicated and lengthy travel directions by text message? Email maybe, but text message? It’s a good thing we have a generous text message allowance on our phone plan.

It was close to seven at night before they pulled up in our driveway, well after dark (remember, they still had a three-hour drive back). It was a short but memorable visit.

They didn’t know how to carry furniture; they tried to give us fifty dollars less than the agreed price (we were having none of that); the little mini-pickup truck was too small to properly fit the cabinet; the blankets they had brought to cover the cabinet had gotten soaked in a rainstorm on the way over; and they fought constantly and emotionally about what to do and how to do it.

To ease the move, we agreed to swap their soaking wet bedspread (I walked it straight out to the washer) for an old sheet and bed-pad we had. We kept track of the volume of things they were pulling out of the truck and leaving randomly on the side. We carried out the shelves and the glass doors and made sure they were in bubble wrap. When we weren’t busy with all that, we spent the time watching with wide eyes, trying to stifle our giggles.

Our favorite though, was when they pulled a tarp from the back of the truck bed in preparation for covering the cabinet for the three-hour ride back across the state. That sucker was huge! I’d bet it would have covered most of our roof.

Trying to get it unwound and shaken out and refolded (and yes, it too was damp) required all four of us and steady directions from me: “Back up, back up, farther…watch the planter bed! Grab that side…good…fold this way, fold toward the center…hang on tightly everyone! Hang on to your corners; now shake hard…let’s get this thing tight and folded again…one more fold…”

By the time they left all we could think was that we’d done what we could, we were proud to have insisted on our price, and we wished them all the luck in the world in getting back home. We are still giggling.

Now where else could we have so much fun, staying at home, meeting such an incredible variety of people, learning so much about local resources, and discovering new and useful bits of information?

Ahhh, the unsung perks of downsizing…