Logistics: Or, A Packrat's Lament

[textualdeviance]

The bedroom and its associated closets and bath are basically done! Just some random crap here and there that needs to be dealt with at the last minute. That makes five rooms done and three rooms at about 80%. The two big projects left now are M's office, the dining room and the garage. We're getting there!

There is one big snag we're starting to face, however.

We've been piling up boxes and such in each room, and trying to group things by what's going into storage and what's being given away. This is all well and good, except that I'm not sure how we're going to wrangle the giving away stuff. We've hired some folks to load the storage pod, so most of the big furniture and the storage boxes will be cleared out, but I'm not entirely sure how we're going to manage everything else.

I'm hoping that we get some folks (either y'all or some Craigslisters) to haul out the bigger stuff where it sits, but I'm not sure how to best handle the other stuff.

Our intention is to have a garage sale, but there's just SO MUCH stuff that I don't think we can manage hauling it all out and setting it up like that on our own. Have you ever seen garage sales where people are just invited to roam the house and grab what they want? Because that's looking like our best option at this point. I'm not sure I can even be arsed to put price tags on any of it.

The house will feel somewhat emptier after stuff's been loaded into the pod, but even after that, there's going to be a ton left over, and I want it gone, else I'll be tempted to set fire to the whole lot. I'd prefer that it goes to someone who can use it, whether that's one of y'all, a garage sale customer or a charity, but whatever happens, it just has to go, so we can get started on the fixes the house needs.

I'm honestly not sure how this really works. All my other moves have had only a few things left over--enough to just throw in a car and drop off at Goodwill after it's all said and done. Having something like four rooms worth of boxes and bags that need to go is way, way over my head.

Any bright ideas?

Comments

[mrdorbin.livejournal.com]

Freecycle, depending on how much you care about getting money for it? Make it clear that it's box-by-box, but I'll bet you can get people to take a fair bit of it off your hands. I know Lifelong has a list of things on their website that they will take for their thrift store, so you might be able to get rid of a bunch that way too.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

I think that may be some of what we do. I know that a lot of charities will come pick up stuff at the curb, but I dunno if they'll have people come in and haul boxes, which is really kind of what we need.

[thefirstalicat.livejournal.com]

I saw mr_dobbin mentioned freecycle, but when I used that site, it turned out to be more of a pain than I expected.

Have you considered 1-800-GOT-JUNK? Yeah, you have to pay them to haul it away, but the cost is based on the amount of space your stuff takes up in the van rather than inherent value or anything like that. Their thing is that they will donate what's usable to places that need those items, repair what they can to donate also, recycle what can be recycled, and take to the dump whatever they can't either repair, donate or recycle. Since you all drive, it's not necessarily a big deal for you to haul stuff around yourself; since we don't drive, we've found them very useful. But, like I said, you pay them for the service.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

We did use Got Junk once, and were very happy with the way our garage kind of just got clean. We'll probably do that with whatever's left over after the useable stuff has been sold or donated.

[thefirstalicat.livejournal.com]

Ooops, sorry, I meant mrdorbin above, my mistake!

[spookyevilone.livejournal.com]

Estate sales here run much like that. Stuff in the house, open door, people allowed to roam and either make offers on stuff or purchase for stickered price.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

That's good to know. That may well be what we do, then. An "open house" sale or something like that. Which would actually make more sense, given our weather here.