Santorini – That’s where I can be if I didn’t have to pay rent in NYC.
It was a surprisingly easy decision to GO TRAVEL! Now I have to face the realities of that decision, specifically- how do I get rid of my stuff?! Not complaining but holy cow I underestimated:
- how much stuff I had and
- how much work it is to sell it and
- how hard it is to find good places to donate to and
- lugging your stuff to said donation places
I’ll use this post to summarize my research into the best ways to get rid of your stuff. (not complete list right now, by far!)
Selling Options
Ideally I would make back some cash on the big ticket items. Here’s my strategy.
Post a flyer in my building
Based on the fact that I don’t live very close to the subway, I’m not confident people seeing my ads from other places in Brooklyn or Manhattan will come all the way to my neighborhood and then walk from the subway to buy my stuff. So I am creating a one page flyer with my big ticket items to post around the neighborhood. It take out the element of a “trek to Brooklyn” since they’re already in Brooklyn! We’ll see how this goes.
Craigslist
I used Craigslist many moons ago, when I was first moving into my first college apartment. It’s obviously no longer the secret it once was and it seems to be a much more difficult environment to sell things. For furniture, it’s not going to help that I live on a 5th floor walk up…
My strategy is to list my big ticket furniture on Craigslist which includes:
- Couch
- Bookcase
- Dresser
- Desk
- Coffee table
- Kitchen cart
Amazon
I have SO MANY BOOKS. More recently I’ve been reading on my Kindle, but I had a sizeable book collection before that and I still can’t help but stop in bookstores. I’ll try to sell some of my books that fall more into the textbook category on Amazon. They seem to protect their sellers if things get stolen along the way.
eBay
I was reading about eBay experiences from sellers and there was a lot of negative press, much more than Amazon. I’ll list things on eBay if it’s worth the trouble of shipping.
Donation Options
For most of my clothes, it looks like donating will have to be the way to go. It’s so hard to sell individual pieces of clothing online.
Dress for Success *
This was my first choice for donating, probably just because of the name recognition? Unfortunately they only accept donations ONCE A MONTH at the Manhattan location, and only for a 3 hour time span. I guess they’re not that in need for more clothes.
Bottomless Closets ****
I googled “donate professional womens clothing” and came across this result. They only have one Manhattan location, but they’re open almost every day. This means I could take little by little bit to them and not have to do one big drop. They do the same thing as Dress for Success, so I’m on board. They also accept jewelry so that’s a great option for my many Ann Taylor Loft necklaces. It makes you feel good everything will go to a home that really wants/needs it.
Put it out on the street
Yep. This is an option and I’m certain the stuff will be gone immediately after I put it out there. Last resort is to the streets! A few months ago I put out a big box of books and all of them were gone within 30 min except the first Twilight, which isn’t really surprising!