The Moving Sale...

There is something to be said about having a bunch of strangers tramping through your house in order to sell all your worldly possessions. In about 1 week, I will not have a permanent home to call my own, therefore I needed to purge myself of nearly everything I own. It's strange to walk through your treasured possessions and place a price tag on them, but it was something that needed to be done. 

On Thursday and Friday, with detached determination and a friend's assistance, I went through every item in my household and decided their value. Because I needed to rid myself of an entire house of items, I think I was pretty reasonable with the pricing. I did not give items away nor did I expect to get a fortune out of the items. In order to garner as much traffic to my door as possible, I place an ad in Craiglist and strategically positioned "Moving Sale" signs all over my neighborhood with arrows pointing them in the right direction. (My apartment can be a little difficult to locate.) 

Yesterday morning, I woke and was ready to greet my first customers, who blatantly ignored the 8am start time and showed up at 7:30. Although to their credit, they didn't enter my building until 7:45 - slightly complaining that if they had known that the door was opened they wouldn't have waited so long. To which I responded that it wasn't quite 8am. They walked through the apartment for about 10 minutes, looked around, bought nothing, and left. After that came a whole host of ... erm ... interesting people. The couple who decided without asking that their Pekingese dog was welcome in my home. The family with a special needs child who allowed him to run amok in my house. The people who reeked of tobacco smoke. The woman who said I was brave for allowing people into my home because "you never know who might show up." The couple who showed up 30 minutes after end of the sale, asking if they could take a quick look, and then bought $1.50 worth of items. Ah, the public. Aren't they joyful? Now it wasn't all bad. I met some very nice people who were respectful and had a grand time purchasing my items. One guy even came back because he decided to buy something that he had seen earlier.

While I did not get rid of everything, my apartment is now fairly sparse and my wallet is slightly heavier. I will give one more try on various sites to sell the last of my belongings, but in 2 days if everything doesn't sell, I will gladly donate the rest. Dealing with flaky people is tiresome and I'd rather just cut my losses and give anything left to a good cause.

It's very freeing to rid oneself of all possessions with the exception of clothing and a few electronics. Everything I own now fits into a small corner of a room in my apartment.

The extent of my worldly possessions. I
probably still have too many clothes.

As for Lotta, I still have not found a new home for her and, sadly, it looks like I'm going to have to call the local feline rescue to see if they can find a temporary or permanent house for her. I didn't want to have to go this route but my back's against the wall.