When you finally have to get rid of all your stuff

[autumnbreeze27]

Originally Posted by Bill4

Five years ago I started offloading my stuff - sold it, gave it to charity shops, dumped it. A year later I only had about 10% of it left and 95% of that will be moving onto the boat with me.

My partner... Different story. After five years she managed to sell, give away or dump about 50% of her stuff.

We finally sold our house at the end of July and moved into a large rented apartment, along with boxes and boxes of her "stuff". So much so that we also had to rent a storage unit. We only gave the keys back to the storage unit about two weeks ago, but now the apartment has become the storage unit. We can't move for boxes of god-knows-what piled up from floor to ceiling. I hate it, I can't live like this. She knows... There have been arguments, full-blown blazing rows... At times it has not been good. She currently has 31 items on ebay... At the present rate of progress I'm naively hopeful that another 6 months should do it.

This dream to go full time liveaboard/cruising is as much hers as mine but it's been absolute agony watching the days, weeks, months and years tick by while she deals with her stuff from her old life (26 years married to someone who hated boats (she loves 'em). They separated a couple of years before we met).

Sorry, I don't know why I'm typing all this on a public forum but the topic struck a chord and I'm having a bad day.

That probably would have been me if I had my way, but I was too busy with work to sell my stuff fast enough. The way I think of it, time is money. When you consider the living, moving, and storage expenses, she'd have to have a lot of high dollar items to make that worthwhile.

[Birdseed]

Been selling my tools and equipment from my auto repair shop. I was feeling a little distressed thinking about the people we helped and the young mechanics trained here. I have to remind myself of the big picture and I have no problem sleeping at night.

[captainbri]

I guess I had it easy. I lost everything in a flood overseas. The bad part it was bought with boat money.

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[BandB]

Originally Posted by captainbri

I guess I had it easy. I lost everything in a flood overseas. The bad part it was bought with boat money.

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That's a horrible thing to have happen.

I know a family that lost their house and everything in it to a tornado. They happened to be out of town. They came back and what was left was widely spread pieces of trash. The husband/father said it was one of the most significant moments of his life, feeling so lucky they weren't there. That he suddenly realized how unimportant all the "things" were.

[captainbri]

Originally Posted by BandB

That's a horrible thing to have happen.

I know a family that lost their house and everything in it to a tornado. They happened to be out of town. They came back and what was left was widely spread pieces of trash. The husband/father said it was one of the most significant moments of his life, feeling so lucky they weren't there. That he suddenly realized how unimportant all the "things" were.

It does make you realize how little we need.

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[dannc]

I helped clean up after hurricane Floyd flooded out eastern NC, and a few years ago, a front came through dropping tornadoes all over the central and eastern part of the state. I have an interesting lightning story but I will leave that for another time. One of the tornadoes killed two people in a rural area and one of the people was related to a coworker. Some of us went down to clean up what was left of the house....

Stuff is Stuff. Loosing stuff can be emotionally and financially damaging but most stuff can be replaced.

After the flood, we were cleaning up one house in an area that had never flooded. A entire section of town was wiped out. We were taking this guy's stuff out of his house and moving it to the curb to be taken to the dump. Fridges and freezers stink. Literally and figuratively. DO NOT OPEN A FRIDGE OR FREEZER that has been without power for a couple of weeks. Just DO NOT DO IT! Leave it alone!

Unless you want to puke.

Anywho, we got most of this guys stuff out of the house and we were down to his living room furniture he had just bought. The problem was the furniture had swollen up from the flood water and we could not get the stuff out the door. I asked the owner, who was maybe in his 30's, if he cared if we busted up his furniture with an axe so it could be taken from the house. There really was no choice but I figured lets let the guy believe he has some control on events. He says yes so one of my guys takes my axe and starts tearing up this guys furniture. I think it was the first new furniture the guy ever had owned.

The owner and I are standing outside the house while his furniture is being busted up. Pretty spring day. Clear sky. Nice temps. It stunk though. Literally and figuratively, since we were surrounded by piles of house hold goods that was destroyed by the flood. The houses were 40-50 years old in this part of town and as we were talking, I noticed his roof looked new so I asked him if he had just redone his roof.

He said, "Yep, just put on a brand new roof to keep water out of the house." We both just busted a gut laughing at that statement. You had no choice but to laugh at the irony as we were surrounded in rotting stench of his, his neighbors, and his family's belongs rotting in the sun, with his pretty new roof protecting his water logged house, while my guys busted up his brand new furniture. That man had not one thing left in the world. Nothing. Except his family.

Got other stories of that flood but that is enough...

The tornado cut a path in a rural area and destroyed four homes. If the tornado path had been 100 yards one way or another the two people would not have died. The clean up served three purposes. To clean up the mess, finding stuff of value, which was mainly emotional value, and to show the surviving family members that somebody beside family gave a rats a...ss.

Two of the trailers were just gone. Spread across a few acres. One son held his elderly dad as his father bled to death. No stuff was left that had money value. The home we were cleaning up had been picked up, turned over and dropped upside down. It was a modular home that was strapped down but the tornado ripped the strapping like it was a zipper. Things of value were removed but mostly we were looking for the keepsakes and photos. THAT was the important stuff.

This house was maybe 1/4 to 1/3 a mile from the two trailers where the dad died. I was walking through the field cleaning up stuff and I found a photo from one of those two trailers. I guess maybe 1/2 mile away. The photo was not from the family I was helping so I walked over and asked if this photo belong to the other family. Sure enough it did. It was a fairly old photo of a child and the family said it was one of the few remaining photos they had of that child. From the tone of voice it sounded like the kid in the photo had died. I don't know if the child had died at an early age or later in life and I sure was not going to ask. They had enough trauma to deal with without any reminders of the past. They did not get much out of the rubble that was left of the two homes but I got lucky and found one thing that was a treasure for them. They walked away clutching that photo. Unreal that it survived and I found it....

Most stuff is just stuff. Not really worth much, if any, money But there is other stuff that connects generations that has a different value.

In our case, we don't have much important family stuff, and what we do have, can be stored sorta cheaply.

If a disaster ever hits near you, go help out. It does help the victims and honestly, the Federal government don't do s...t. The disasters I have seen, only local people have come out to help with the exception of religious groups. I was in Eastern NC right after Floyd hit, and in the town were we cleaned up houses, the flood waters had just peaked. I brought some people back a week or so later to help clean up. Even with the water still high, Mennonites were already working to provide clothing and services to the victims. The Red Cross was in town giving out cold dinners and the National Guard had a mess setup at the railroad station. That was it. When I got back down there a week or so later, the Baptists had moved in with quite a bit of help and equipment and the Mennonites were still there. I don't know where those Mennonites came from but they were awesome. They would put your fanny to work ASAP if you were just standing around not doing anything!

The Guard was gone. The Red Cross was gone. The Feds were never to be seen which ticked me off to no end. NC has a USMC divsion, the 82nd airborne, a USMC air wing, at least one USAF air wing just upstream of the flooding, and I think at the time, another air wing at Ft. Bragg. A company of infantry in each county for a week would have help the citizens immensely and yet not one unit moved off post/base which pisses me off. Not one.

After the tornadoes, same results. No Feds. I did not see the National Guard or Red Cross either but they could have been there somewhere. The only people on the ground picking the sh..t up was locals and a church drove down from VA to help clean up what we had not finished.

I told one volunteer fire fighter that what we really needed to do after we picked through the rubble was to push the stuff into a pile and burn it but if we HAD done that, THEN we would have seen the Feds and State. They would have come it to write us up for some violation. The fire fighter pulled the coworkers family member from the rubble and tried to save the father.

Anywho, if their is a local disaster, go help out. Its the only dam...d help the locals are going to get that helps them directly. The Feds will eventually throw in some dollars but that does not get the stuff clean up and put on the road. The survivors are left alone except for family and maybe some neighbors to clean up. A few strangers showing up in a few trucks with some tools, strong backs and weak minds really helps out the survivors. SOMEONE DOES care.

One of the families we helped out sent me a very nice thank you note which I have kept and will be put into storage if we pull off the boat idea.

Later,
Dan

[Birdseed]

Doing well getting rid of stuff on CL. I'm about 40% over what the 4 auctioneers estimated I'd get. I have a 4x8 utility for sale. $400 bucks. A woman wants me to deliver it 350 miles for 200. The same trailer sells for 1100.00 new.

I told here I'd deliver it to Spionk, NY for 800.00 and a BJ.

[CaptainHooks]

I started selling off my stuff about 2 months ago. I tell you it's a real eye opener when you start to deal with the scum of society. I had all my craigslist ads posted with how old the items were, how they were in perfect condition, pics from every angle to show as such. Post a link to the item brand new and my price is marked down a good 30-40%.

They still lowball me 80% off the price I'm asking. So many scumbags. So many scam artists. So many people who agree to your asking price and show up with half of what they agreed to saying "Take it or leave it".

I ended up giving away most of my stuff to friends/family/goodwill. I'd rather have nothing to show than to reward the terrible people of the world. All I have left is a small desk and a loveseat and I think I'm just going to give both of those to Goodwill.

[sully75]

No idea about that, I've sold so much stuff on ebay, some on CL on occasion, have had very few poor experiences.

[CaptainHooks]

Originally Posted by sully75

No idea about that, I've sold so much stuff on ebay, some on CL on occasion, have had very few poor experiences.

I just sold a camera and lens on ebay. Specifically stated "Continental US Only" and someone from Puerto Rico bid and won and paid via paypal. I read through eBay's terms and they say it's acceptible to cancel the sale, refund the money, and relist. It also gave helpful hints on how to restrict people from bidding on your item that are not in your acceptable shipping area.

The person from Puerto Rico left me a negative feedback, outright lied about me, and eBay won't let me retaliate and won't let me remove it. I'm so ready to set sail for a desert island and never return

[Birdseed]

Got rid of the good stuff. Going through closets one at a time now dealing with pictures, clothing and bed linen. I'm trying to pick a boat yard in St. Pete. That way I can start looking for a small apt. close by to walk to 'Work'.

[Hard Rock Candy]

I gave away most of my stuff and kept it all. I was getting ready to sell my house so that I could retire and buy a boat. My oldest son said he would like to buy it and the 3 shops full of tools and supplies. So I sold it to him and his wife and sons. I kept a small 1/2 acre parcel to live on till I die. I get to use all the stuff that I sold. The kind of stuff I keep is stuff that I can make things with and out of. As I was growing up, my Dad was a traveling preacher and we moved 15 times before I got out of Highschool. so I had gotten rid of everything a lot of times. It is really a good experience to be free of stuff. Of course it would be nice to have nothing but money. Mac

[popeye31]

After reading all your posts I started selling my junk today running adds on craigslist. It will be a few years before I am able to move aboard a boat I haven't bought yet but I figure if its as hard as yall say to get rid of everything I'll have a good head start.

[mischief]

We're going through the same thing.
We've gone the storage unit route. It has helped us tremendously and I think without it we would have waited a good 6more months. We had a garage sale and donated a heap after selling the best things on auction and classifieds.
We moved mostly boat items into storage some extra clothes some sporting stuff and pictures.
We hope now that we are on the boat, we will keep thinning and reducing as we finish putting things together.
As boat items start going back on the boat the storage unit will empty out more and more.
We hope by the time we are ready to load the extra sails safety gear etc on the boat that we will have sold everything else except maybe a very small amount like photos. But maybe we will transfer them all digitally and get rid of it all.
Less is best and within 2 days of moving aboard we took off a carload of stuff we will get rid of.


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[belizesailor]

You can get rid of all your stuff!? Damn, why didn't I think of that! ;-) Of course it would have required getting rid of my wife too.