Estate sale/garage sale or something else?

We were able to give away some furniture to a hospital employee H knew. We left some stuff until the house sold and family plus friends finished emptying the house for us so we did not need to return the well over 1000 miles. The Salvation Army does pick up (even though I disagree with their take on religion at least people benefit). We were able to find people to take our washer/dryer through an immigrant help organization. A call to such organizations can yield possibilities. Check for annual city sponsored electronics recycling in your area. We are wealthy enough we didn’t need the money from old stuff- just so glad to finally leave some of it behind.

Great idea to downsize. Fresh start. One disadvantage of being our ages is having a lot of stuff acquired decades ago that is too good to replace even though we wish we could buy now. Giving to kids’ first apartments helped.
Perhaps listing in a college area would help.

Our Restore does take exercise equipment so ck with them, it may just be if they have space, idk.

@thumper1 - that answered my question. Thanks! I probably didn’t word it very well.

@Hoggirl

Actually, I know three folks who did this. None wanted to really make money…and all understood that it was “stuff” they just needed to get rid of.

Having an estate person was a very cost effective way to get rid of everything!

I’d hold a garage sale and be very liberal with the pricing. It won’t be very lucrative but it can be rewarding in other ways, such as when you give a small child a stuffed animal map they’re eyeing. We’ve found that there are always people who need stuff and are very grateful to get it for next to nothing.

Please google the topic of “downsizing + estate sales”, and you’ll soon find out that most normal household stuff, including once-expensive furniture and artwork, have little resale value beyond thrift-store pricing. Be sure to educate yourself, so you’re ready to do a serious purge. Thrift stores will take clean, working, saleable stuff, and often not old appliances, or big tvs, or mattresses, or tv cabinets, and will even eye-ball inspect your furniture before loading it on truck. You may want to get a dumpster delivered, or hire junk-truck to haul-away the unwanted stuff; our suburban garbage service charges extra for every item that doesn’t fit in our two Rubbermaid garbage containers.

My uncle didn’t want to share my aunt’s (and my grandmother’s) chinaware and figurines with his own kids, thinking he was going to earn $$$$ at his upscale professional house-sale. Uncle was pleased by the prices, and shocked by how little sold. Worse, contract specified sale-manager would “clean-out house at no cost”, which really meant that 80% of household contents went to sales-manager as no-cost stock in its off-site resale store. Yes, perfectly legal, and iften happens, along with kickback to referring real estate agent.

Best arrangement: let the kids pick what they’d like, now or never, from what’s not coming to your new home, then let friends and family pick, then call a non-profit resale shop with pick-up service to retrieve what’s in good saleable condition, and the rest goes into dumpster or junk-truck service. Yes, it’s hard to dismantle a home.

That said, we recently sold some high-quality like-new recognizable designer large furniture items on Craigslist, priced at fraction of retail price for items still in current manufacturer line, and could write a chapter-long story about each experience. Many buyers on Craigslist are flakes. Think hard before listing, worse if items are free, in our experience - lots of (sometimes relatively intimidating) resellers out there trying to aggressively procure merchandise for free who you don’t want to meet at your home alone.

Restore, Habitat’s retail store is awesome. When we redid our kitchen they took all the old cabinets,counter tops,appliances, table & chairs even the kitchen sink!

In our area, St. Vincent DePaul’s Catholic Charity (separate from St. Vincent DePaul’s Charity) is the contact organization for refugee resettlement. They will pick things up. Habitat Restore is also a good idea.