How to Sell/give/drop everything to go traveling
Before the round-the-world tour, we chose to keep our business to a minimum, since our dream, after the round-the-world tour, is to settle down somewhere in the world.
With this in mind, storing our IKEA tea cups in a 100€/month room seemed inadequate to us.
The chosen solution: sell/give a maximum, store a minimum with our relatives.
We were afraid not to be able to do so, given the large number of objects accumulated over the years. But after reading the blogs of other travelers like Thrifty Nomads who managed to empty apartments much more crowded than ours, accompanied by a “If we can tackle this, I promise you can tackle your clutter too”, we took our courage in our hands and we succeeded. So if we can tackle this, so can you!
Click on the image to zoom in, you can see that we had a lot of things in our living room.
In order to empty the apartment, we proceeded in stages:
– List all important objects. Classify them by category: for sale/to give/to keep. To help you in your choice, arm yourself with the book The Magic of Storage by Marie Kondo which I have talked about at length here.
– For the categories to sell/give away, sort them by possible sale date (do we still need it? until when? will it sell easily?)
– For the category to be sold, find the invoice/guarantee/purchase price to better set the selling price
– If possible, physically separate objects by zone. Create sell/give/keep zones to better estimate the time and energy to be spent
Tips for objects “for sale”:
– On Word, we made a list of objects for sale, with purchase/sale price, dimensions, possible sale date. This list was shared to friends via Facebook and pasted in front of the elevator of our building.
– At the same time, we put ads on Le Bon Coin (see our article 6 tips to sell well on Leboncoin)
– Items forbidden to be sold on Le Bon Coin such as perfumes have been sold on eBay or Vinted (tips to sell well on Vinted here)
– Items that were poorly sold on The Good Corner such as books/CD/DVDs were sold via Gibert and Momox (see our article How to resell your books/CD/DVDs). The other items were sold at CashExpress
-Clothes and bags (branded or not) sell much better on a site like Vinted
– Very bulky items such as the wardrobe were dismantled by the buyers in exchange for a good price. Items that had already been dismantled were sold for a little more
Tips for objects “to give” :
– The bulky goods department must be contacted one day in advance. Usually, we bring the furniture down late at night so that the bulky people can pick it up in the morning.
– Several Emmaus boxes are available for the donation of clothes and shoes. Please close the bag tightly and donate only clothes in good condition.
– Objects not sold on Leboncoin or small unsaleable objects such as lighters, post its, files, crockery, books, DVDs, rods … were simply placed in front of the elevator of our building. It leaves very quickly.
– Medications can be dropped off at the pharmacy
– Cosmetics can be given to girlfriends or on barter sites. Be careful however with the date of use (some products can only be used 6 months after opening).
– Dishes must be deposited directly at Emmaus. For the sake of laziness, we gave all this to the neighbors and buyers Leboncoin
Tips for “disposable” items:
– Throw them away as soon as possible, if you haven’t used them for months, there is no chance that you will repair/use them one last time before the trip around the world
– If after one day the objects deposited in front of the elevator are still there, it means that nobody wants them, then throw them in the trash can
– Clothes in bad condition must end up in the yellow garbage can and not given to Emmais because it costs them a lot to sort them out
Tips for objects “to keep” :
– Keep only the things you really like. Ask yourself if it will make you happy to find it again after your trip around the world. If the answer is no, then it belongs rather to the categories to sell/give/dispose of
– Pay a safe deposit box at the bank for important documents & jewelry. It only costs 100e/year
– Store clothes in vacuum bags to limit mold and mildew and above all save space for those who keep these things for free
– Take a picture of what you are keeping, otherwise in a year you will have forgotten everything
– The boxes to be kept can be sent by SNCF who will deliver them to the address of your choice. This service is very affordable and will save you from breaking your back
And since such a sorting cannot be done without help, we called upon :
– our friends to share the sales list and who gave us a hand. When we are overwhelmed by tons of objects around us, they have been there to help us see more clearly. Thanks to them!
– our family who agreed to keep our boxes, and our cat
– senioravotreservice.com service to dismantle furniture, plug holes in the wall, etc
– cleaning ladies to clean all walls and windows prior to the inventory of fixtures
– our babysitter who helped us sell a lot of things to the neighbors and advised us on the products to use to remove this or that stain
– to our buyers who have sent the list of things for sale to their loved ones
– to our cat Rosalie who has kindly agreed to part with most of her cushions
Our apartment is finally empty, it’s the beginning of the adventure!
