What do I do with it?

The answer is always, “It depends”!  

I recently experienced this dilemma when we broke up my own parents home.  As I’ve stated before my parents where collectors of 18th Century.  

Their collections were vast, for my mom it was Pink and White Transferware, Doulton Dickens Ware, Traveling Desks, Pewter, and all the accouterments for an 18th Century lifestyle.  For my dad it was guns, telescopes, pond sailers, power tools for wood working to build furniture and make reproduction folk art.  As I’ve mentioned before, if she could dream it, he could build it.

When we inventoried everything for the estate sale there were 3267 items and that was after close to 50-60 trips to the thrift stores.  This was a huge under taking.  After my sister and I made our own choices, and the sale was over we still had probably over 1000 items left.  What did we do?  The large pieces we farmed out to a consignment store. The leftovers were either thrifted or brought home.  It was 10 months of sometimes very difficult and hard decisions every single day.  Lots of soul searching and sometimes a lot of tears. 

• Make a top 25.  (This should be done long before it is necessary.)  Those items that are important to you that you can’t live without.There were so many things that I wanted to keep but just couldn’t because I didn’t have room.  My home is furnished and every piece of furniture was selected for a specific spot.  I didn’t have the luxury of  “designing a room around this”.  So if a piece of furniture came home a piece of my furniture had to go into the estate sale.  In the end a lot of my top 25 had to go.
• Create a space where you can warehouse these items.  Place everything in one spot but keep it organized and marked.  (Our lower level room was a disaster for 9 months)  Don’t try to deal with everything at once.
• Give yourself grace.  (You’re still overwhelmed and grieving)
• Things will have a way of showing their importance.  Sometimes things that were so important to you at the time, in actuality a year down the road are not that important.  When that time comes get it out of the house.  Sell it, gift it or thrift it.  Don’t hang on to it. 
• Create a sell space!  Many of the leftovers still need to be sold.  Because their collections were so varied I need to find the right buyer for them.  I am selling in groups using both Ebay and Marketplace.  Take a category and sell it off.  I have a rack in my laundry room where I have “staged” a place for the lot, along with all the packing material to easily pack and ship.  As soon as one lot is sold I move on to the next.  

This can be a slow process so you have to be patient.  I research everything I post, take into consideration the condition and come up with a price and then the market decides what the price will bare.  Have I sold things under value absolutely.  Have I had pangs and second thoughts after something has gone out the door, you bet.  But you know in the end a have a few more $$$ in my pocket and an extra s/f back to my home. For me this is necessary, for most they wouldn’t even try to tackle this and that’s fine.

Stay tuned.  Once you get thru this phase you can move on to actual incorporation into your home.

Thanks for stopping

Shelley