Crossing the Finish Line
To date, this is the only marathon I’ve ever completed, and I feel like I’ve been sprinting the whole time. But I successfully sold, donated, threw away, or gave away almost everything in my condo in the last month. The items I kept fit into a van and a Honda Civic, both of which I drove two hours to my mother’s house this week and unloaded with the help of a good friend who didn’t know what she’d agreed to when I asked for her help.
Everything hurts. From the bottoms of my feet to my teeth. But I completed what felt like a Herculean task only a month ago.
A month ago I posed the question: how exactly does one go about getting rid of all their “stuff?” Well, now I can answer that. I won’t claim that it was a pretty or well-organized process. And I’m sure other people who have done this have alternate ways to reach the same end goal. But this is how it went for me.
Begin the Condo Purge
My goal was to start by sorting things into five categories: 1) trash, 2) shred, 3) donate, 4) keep, 5) sell. However, I quickly discovered I did not have enough free space for this original plan. So I pivoted and began going through little by little. I’d pick an area of my apartment and begin the sorting.
- Trash– Self explanatory.
- Shred– I would shred until the shredder overheated, then give it a break while I went onto something else.
- Donate– I kept a list of what I was adding to the donate bags. When I had enough to fill my car, I drove it a few miles down the road to Goodwill.
- Keep– I divided into three sub-categories.
- a) Things that I wanted to store in my mother’s basement but wouldn’t actually need access to; b) Things to give to my family or friends;
- c) Things that still had life left in them so I didn’t want to throw away, but wouldn’t be accepted as donations. For example, a lifetime supply of cough drops and post-it pads.
- Sell– these were items I thought I could get some money for. DVDs, books, furniture, kitchen appliances, electronics…
This all sounds nice and organized when I write it here, but the actual day-to-day felt like complete chaos.
Clearing Out Everything in My Condo Was a Full Time Job
A number of people have asked me what it feels like to not work anymore. I respond that I don’t know yet, as clearing out my condo has been a full time job; more-so because I’ve been working late into the night and weekends too. There were a couple issues. First, I quickly discovered that it took the same amount of time to list a $5 item for sale as a $50 item, so it was better to spend my time on the $50 items. But that didn’t mean the $5 items were trash. So do I sell them, donate them, or give them away?
I also had hundreds of books and movies. Most of them fell into the category of things I didn’t want to throw away, but I could sell for small amounts or donate if no one else wanted them. During my virtual office going away party I shared this dilemma. My boss suggested making an inventory. I agreed this was a good idea. The problem was how long it would actually take to create something like that. I came up with what I thought was an ingenious solution. In retrospect I realize many people who might read this will think it was obvious and I’m not nearly as smart as I think I am.
A Major Time-Saver
Instead of sitting in front of my bookshelf with my laptop and typing up each title, I used the notepad function on my phone and the microphone. I read off each book title and author, each DVD title, and each CD name and artist, checking occasionally that the microphone was capturing words correctly. I then Airdropped my note onto my computer and copy/pasted everything into a Google Sheet. What could have easily taken me a day took me about an hour. I created separate tabs in my “Home Inventory” for Books, Movies, CDs, and Other. In the “Other” tab I began adding anything else I needed to sell or get rid of. I shared the above link to the spreadsheet on Facebook and I posted it on my condo building’s virtual bulletin board. Since I did all this mid-December, I had over a month for people to claim items and arrange pickup.
A Little Momentum
I immediately received responses from some friends who wanted pieces of my book or movie collection. A number of my neighbors responded for things like bookshelves and lamps. These results were encouraging so I kept going with my sorting while waiting for more responses. As I progressed and found additional items that might sell, I added them to the spreadsheet. I also posted items individually to Facebook Marketplace and eBay. I had good luck selling my old camera equipment on eBay. Facebook Marketplace really came through for me with other miscellaneous items. In total, I made around $3,300 since the end of December from selling items online.
By the third week of January I had gone through every closet, cabinet, drawer, box, etc., and thrown out and shredded everything that could be discarded. I still had piles of items I’d listed online, and other items I hadn’t listed but I didn’t want to throw away because they were still in good shape and I wanted someone to use them. I also had some items that had to go, but I would need to keep using until the last minute; my bed, for example. At this point, I re-posted on my building’s virtual bulletin board, posted on the actual bulletin board in the mailroom, posted on Facebook Marketplace, and posted on Freecycle, that everything left to go was free.
Everybody Loves Free Stuff
A piece of advice: if you decide to post free stuff on Facebook, be prepared to be inundated with messages. I was not prepared. I posted right before going to sleep and woke up to around 50 messages. It took me hours to go through and respond to them and more came in while I was answering the backlog. In some cases, they were spam, and no one responded back. Sometimes a person would ask if they could come the following week. Some people wanted more information, pictures, measurements, serial numbers, etc. I realize those are not unreasonable requests, but with the amount of work I had to do I didn’t have time to get into those details for something I was giving away. Overall, I favored people who could come pick up sooner rather than later. For the last few items I needed to keep using, the people who could commit to my schedule got preference.
The biggest hurdle was my bed. I needed it to sleep in until the day I moved out, but then it needed to be picked up that day, and before 4pm. I had someone interested, but they couldn’t come before 5pm, and I was informed by my condo building that the loading dock couldn’t be opened after 4pm. Luckily, the day I was moving out, I found someone else who could come earlier in the day. The timing was a real point of stress in getting rid of the last few things and being sure people would follow through in their promises to pick up.
Breathing a Big Sigh of Relief
Earlier in the week someone had bought my TV, and agreed to come pick it up on Thursday around 6:30pm. Since they paid in advance we were both committed. And that became my deadline; I had a two hour drive to my mother’s house that evening. One of my neighbors had paid for my dining table and chairs, so I told him to come then to pick them up. A woman who collected household items for refugee families had filled up her car with free things earlier in the week, and she came back to take pretty much everything that was left. Then it was just a matter of packing up the last few odds and ends, delivering one last lamp to a neighbor, loading my car, leaving my key for my realtor, and driving the two hours to my mother’s house. I was done! Sort of.
Round 2
Once I got to my mother’s house, I unloaded my fairly full car, and then spend the next five days sorting through a number of boxes for what I was taking with me, what I was actually storing in her basement, items that were actually for her, and items that she could keep if she wanted or decide to donate.
My brother had also taken a couple of boxes that he was going to bring out to our mother’s house when he came for the weekend to say goodbye. Of course, it snowed heavily that weekend and my brother couldn’t drive out Saturday like he had planned. He did come out for the day on Sunday, but he forgot the boxes! Luckily I didn’t need any of it to take with me.
Round 2 was not nearly as stressful as the original marathon, but we still had to find homes for a lot of items. My mother now has a lifetime supply of post-it notepads, legal pads, and tape. But she also got a Blu-ray player and a couple dozen new books to read, so I think she made out okay.
The Carry-on Challenge
I had decided I was going to only bring what I could carry on. So I spent a good portion of my five “relaxation” days sorting and packing, and then re-packing to get everything into a suitcase and a backpack. My camera gear takes up about a quarter of my space. Once I was all packed I found a new way to stress out wondering if the airline I was flying would let me board with my carry-on suitcase and my backpack “personal item” that was almost the same size and just as heavy as the suitcase. Spoiler alert: it worked out.
Lessons Learned
If I were to ever do this again…I would never do this again. But if you want to learn from my experience, my biggest takeaway and piece of advice is…start early! I cannot emphasize this enough. I’ve known for months what my timeline was for leaving my job and then leaving to travel. Yes, I was busy with my job, but I should have taken some time each day to start preparing to clear out my condo. I could have sorted papers and shredded or trashed a lot of things before I dedicated this full month to the endeavor. There were plenty of items I could have donated or given away long before now. What’s more, if I’d been just a little more motivated to start a month earlier, I could have listed a lot of things for sale before the end of year holidays, when everyone is shopping for presents! I would probably have been able to sell more things, or make more money off the things I did sell.
Shoulda, coulda, woulda. It all worked out in the end. I started writing this post at my mother’s house on one of those unrestful rest days. But I’m finishing it from my room in Sevilla! More on that later. The moral of this story is there are a lot of ways to get rid of the “stuff” cluttering your home, and if you are really motivated, even that overwhelming task can be mastered!
3 thoughts on “A Marathon-Like Sprint: Clearing Out My Condo”