Wednesday 9 January 2013

Selling Everything You Own

After deciding that you are going on a long term trip the next question is 'What are you going to do with all your stuff?'. We could store it but then we'd have to pay for storage space which I hear is about $80 per week. Or we could sell it all off and keep a few boxes of things at my mum's place. It was a no-brainer, it was time to start selling. 

After 4 years of living in your own place it's been a natural inclination to build yourself a bit of a nest and make it as comfortable as possible. Not that I was intending on laying any eggs or anything like that. Gah! But now the focus is on getting rid of all that stuff and doing it in the most efficient way possible. Ebay, even with its high fees, was the best way to get rid of most things though a lot of the smaller items that were less than $10 were sold at the garage sale earlier on. My heart does a little happy dance whenever I take another item out of the house and mail it off to a new home. Now with 7 weeks to go we're starting to getting rid of furniture and everything that is non-essential on gumtree and ebay.

Kevin's sister recently renovated and furnished her investment apartment so luckily for us she bought a lot of kitchenware, our bed frame and some small appliances like the kettle. This lucky timing saved us a lot of time and energy trying to sell a lot of annoying little things. Thanks Judy and Simon!

Hobo living,  its not that bad.

Now there came a moot point when Kevin told me he wanted to keep his bike. He told me he'd be making a loss if he sold it and had to buy something else later on. After having read every single article on selling everything you own and being very determined to be completely 'stuff-free' I then presented to him the following:
'Is the value of the bike worth the storage?'
'How are you going to get it from Sydney to Melbourne when we come back?'
'Can you not get a bike that is the same or even better when we get back'
'Will you be making that much of a loss selling it now?'

In the end he reluctantly agreed to sell the bike. I too, made excuses about why I should keep certain things, whether for sentimental or monetary reasons but at the end of the day the only thing I will keep is some fabric and a small pile of clothes. Overall its not a  particularly fun experience selling all your worldly goods for a fraction of what you paid for it but a rewarding and liberating one. As the departure date looms ever closer, I'm impatient to leave the nest and go on migration.

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