There is always that person at an estate sale who asks ” What do you do with the stuff that’s left after the sale is over?!” (Because there always IS stuff left over, regardless of how large or small the inventory.)
Sarcasm, my closest friend, honed through many an estate sale encounter, overwhelms my good manners, and I retort” I burn it all in the back yard!”.
All of the stuff never sells!
We are just completing clean up of an estate sale that we held last weekend. It was a dirty environment. We worked through it. The sale setup included removal of 20 cubic yards of trash, just to get to the stuff that was salable and accommodate it’s setup and shop-ability.
And this household had record mounds of stuff to begin with!
We sold an unprecedented volume of stuff over 3 days which left the dregs of unsold stuff behind- in piles! Piles- because estate sale shoppers are not concerned with neatness, when sifting and picking through inventory, looking for the next “great find”. It looked like a cyclone had gone through the house.
This leftover stuff includes but is not limited to: empty cardboard boxes from a myriad of items, a closet of dust and cardboard scraps left from the sale of vintage board games, a lawn mower, power tools, out of style furniture, a pile of random Xmas, Easter and Halloween decor, etc., cleaning supplies, a seashell collection, scraps of stained glass, jars, dried stuff, craft supplies, fabrics, sewing magazines, books, books, books of no value, framed artwork, a daisy art collection, personal care items, shoes, clothes, a bed, a deep freeze full of old food, a Wurlitzer upright piano full of dust, a weight bench, scraps of vintage toys, burnt out power tools, dusty fake floral arrangements, cabinets of old canned goods, an unexplored attic full of who knows what ( no room or time to unpack it and the roof was leaking on top of everything so it became a dumpster load)…kitchen stuff, laundry stuff, Tupper ware, old food, and a hundred other items I can’t define.
Yesterday a 26 foot truck load went to charity. Today a 30 cubic yard dumpster or two is being filled with the leftover trash. The trash guys are wearing Hazmat suits! The estate will pay for removal of the stuff, out of the estate sale proceeds and will still see a profit- over and above all expenses!
This is the stuff of a person’s life. And that person left it all there for someone else to deal with-someday. Someday is here. I am the one who is dealing with it. This someone’s son was smart. He hired EstateMAX to handle the details of his parent’s stuff. The house will be sold and life will go on.
Advice to you packrats and hoarders. You people with OCD, and shopping addictions: STOP now! Don’t leave this for your children to fix later. Take a pill, go to the beach, start running. Change your focus.
