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Having done a couple of moves before, although not quite this scope, here's what I'd recommend: rent out the storage unit now. The point of it is to give you a place to put things you don't need every day. Then buy a bunch of plastic bins from Walmart or wherever and some masking tape; I assume you've already got decent markers. Then pick a room or a set of things, and start packing them up. For example, pack up the records and store them. Pack up the books you can't bear the thought of getting rid of right now. Pack the dishes you don’t need on a daily basis and which won't be needed for at least the next two months. Make sure that none of the bins are heavier than what you can comfortably lift, label them thoroughly (all four sides and the lid), and then drive them over to the storage unit. Set yourself a reasonable goal - one bin packed up and stored a month, maybe. The immediate goal here is to get you started and to get you breathing space. The Konmari style doesn't work for me, personally - it’s fine for if you need to drastically pare things down, but I'd be living like a monk if I tried seriously applying it (and there's some issues with transferring its principles to North American dwelling spaces). Great-aunt Linda's tea set doesn't make you overflow with joy, but you're not comfortable tossing it or selling it? That's okay! Pack it up, and put it in storage. Getting rid of gifts makes you uncomfortable, but you don't love them or have anywhere for them? Pack it up, put it in storage. Once you've gotten everything packed up that you don't need in the day-to-day, make a note for six months from then to go check the storage unit and see if there's anything you want to let go. And make it a reoccurring appointment - every six months, go check. This way, whatever you do with the house? The stuff that's stressing you is getting dealt with. You can easily go get anything you need. The rest of it will be fine until you find somewhere else for it to live, and I think what you need right now is to know that your stuff is somewhere safe and that you don't need to immediately rehome all your possessions.
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# ? Mar 21, 2017 05:36 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 09:29 |
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Crazy people and invalid hoarders generally hire a firm to do all this for them, so you'll probably want to do that.
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# ? Mar 22, 2017 01:00 |
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I'm coming out of many years of being overly sentimental and I recognize a lot of what you're having trouble with since it's so overwhelming. My brother has been really helpful; if I don't know where to start, he'll toss a bunch of stuff in a box for me to go through that he suggests I donate or throw out. The angle I take is that if it's taking up so much space that I don't use it, I should get rid of it and donate it so someone else can take it and enjoy it.DoggPickle posted:I definitely need to pare down all the dishes. 5 sets isn't exactly right as it's more like 2 full sets, and 3 sets worth of random other stuff like Appetizer plates and square dishes instead of round etc. I don't have any emotional attachment to that poo poo. I just know that once I give it all away, I'm going to want a sandwich on a side plate and I'll have to use a big one and get all mad. JK sort of. I can give away at least 2 or 3 "sets" immediately with no regret. I only have so many because I bought a set that was irritatingly heavy and got weirdly hot in the microwave so I put it away and got a new one. poo poo like that. I also have the general girly stuff like all the family sized decorative presentation plates and bowls and Carafes. DoggPickle posted:I'm still having a little trouble letting go of the really nice clothes that I can't fit into anymore. But I actually did put in a few pairs of dress pants because 1) they were SUPER small, like size 6 and that is NEVER gonna happen again and 2) I kind of pray that I will never have to work in an office with that kind of dress code ever again. DoggPickle posted:That's hard. How do you chuck out something that someone gave to you? I have this HIDEOUS and terrifying doll that plays the creepiest song ever, but my old roommate brought it for me all the way from Amsterdam. It's technically funny in a creepy way, but it's not exactly small. I don't think that I can just go "well screw that. gently caress you Doug. I have no respect for your effort and your gift"? Like, I don't care if he ever comes over and notices again, because "I" would know. Does that make sense? quote:I also have a few things from another roommate that I don't LOVE, but he died last year at 35 of the world's most random heart-attack. I can't just chuck those things. The gift things. Not his old random poo poo that he left here, but actual presents that were thoughtful, even if they aren't my favorite. It seems disrespectful to me. Is that silly sentiment? Or human nature?
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# ? Mar 23, 2017 16:05 |
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Be very liberal about throwing stuff out / giving it away.
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# ? Mar 29, 2017 09:39 |
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A storage unit is a really great way to spend a couple thousand bucks saving $500 worth of stuff.
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# ? Mar 30, 2017 14:42 |
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Very carefully. Houses are very heavy, lift with your knees.
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# ? Apr 1, 2017 16:07 |
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FreudianSlippers posted:Very carefully. Haha. I know it seems like I was just talking in circles about the same poo poo over and over... but moving gets about 500% more complicated when you've lived somewhere for a long time. When you're going from 20-something to almost 40 years old, you just gain stuff over time, like you start swapping out your cardboard furniture for real furniture one piece at a time, one year at a time., and you gain things like a kitchen drawer that's full of aspirin, Neosporin, dog nail-clippers. band-aids and 6 kinds of extra batteries. I think that probably the people calling me a hoarder have never owned their own house and haven't had "that year where the weeds go crazy" and that "time that the toilet overflowed and flooded the basement" and that time that "you and your spouse went on a wall-painting binge" etc. I don't have TOO much stuff. I just have a lot of stuff that builds up over time, and I haven't moved since I could do it in a couple of pickup trucks. Thanks for all the good advice, from the people who understand at least a little. I really am working on it. It does overwhelm me at times, but I am going with the pre-rent storage strategy, and I've packed up some stuff to go in to the storage space, and I've made an appointment to go over there and look at the sized spaces and get a view of them in real life. My stuff isn't worth just $500 bucks lol, but I think that's a good strategy for ME for now, since I will probably be traveling around a lot and will have to have a storage space anyways. The medium sized ones are about 100 bucks a month, but my house is a lot more, so it's still a cheaper place to store stuff I've sorted a lot of clothes to give away, packed some dishes to give away, and packed up some books and albums, but it's a little weird as I still have to live here, and I don't really want to live in a bizarro empty house. (and I still use the furniture to EAT and sit on, and I can't pack up any kitchen appliances other than the superfluous dinnerware because I still cook every day and cooking gives me lots of joy. Likewise I use the computer, TV's, printer and workout machine etc. almost every day, so there's a lot of stuff that I can't pack up or move until the last minute/month) Like lamps. I need to see where I'm going for the next year. I will eat a bagel on a full-sized plate and try not to get stupid irritated that it's taking up so much space in the dishwasher.
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# ? Apr 4, 2017 03:22 |
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DoggPickle posted:I know it seems like I was just talking in circles about the same poo poo over and over... but moving gets about 500% more complicated when you've lived somewhere for a long time. When you're going from 20-something to almost 40 years old, you just gain stuff over time, like you start swapping out your cardboard furniture for real furniture one piece at a time, one year at a time., and you gain things like a kitchen drawer that's full of aspirin, Neosporin, dog nail-clippers. band-aids and 6 kinds of extra batteries. I think that probably the people calling me a hoarder have never owned their own house and haven't had "that year where the weeds go crazy" and that "time that the toilet overflowed and flooded the basement" and that time that "you and your spouse went on a wall-painting binge" etc. I don't have TOO much stuff. I just have a lot of stuff that builds up over time, and I haven't moved since I could do it in a couple of pickup trucks. quote:I will eat a bagel on a full-sized plate and try not to get stupid irritated that it's taking up so much space in the dishwasher.
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# ? Apr 4, 2017 15:24 |
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My mom put her house up for sale and it sold in under a week for full price and is moving in a week. She had lived there 27 years. Just start throwing poo poo out; you're not unique, stop using that as an excuse to hoard dog nail clippers.
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# ? Apr 4, 2017 16:21 |
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DoggPickle posted:Haha. lol I moved out 10 years ago and I've owned my own home for the last couple of years. You have too much stuff and you are not nearly ruthless enough about throwing away things you don't need. I called you a hoarder because the first half of the thread was you making excuses for why you have too much crap (which you're still doing) and for why you couldn't possibly get rid of it. You are not unique and special and it's not a requirement of living somewhere or growing older that you acquire tons of useless poo poo. I'm glad you're making some progress, but it's been a month and you're still making excuses as you sloooowly start to plan out whether you can throw out your third extraneous coffee table. Actually get therapy because this task should not be as hard as you're making it.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 13:34 |
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I've just been through this so I know a bit what you're going through. I threw bags and bags and bags of poo poo away, and am donating some of the stuff that actually has value but I don't want in my new place. I don't think just accumulating things makes you a hoarder (it just makes you generally untidy and/or lazy, like I was, which is not itself a good thing either but it's slightly less bad), but your unwillingness to part with things has you flirting with the edge of hoarderdom at the very least. It doesn't matter if something was a gift, or whatever -- I had lots of gifts that went in the bin because, ultimately, I didn't need them and I no longer wanted to have them around. And I certainly didn't want to bother moving them from place to place. If throwing things away is causing you anxiety, you should probably seek help, because that's not normal.
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# ? Apr 7, 2017 18:39 |
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Corrode posted:lol I moved out 10 years ago and I've owned my own home for the last couple of years. You have too much stuff and you are not nearly ruthless enough about throwing away things you don't need. I called you a hoarder because the first half of the thread was you making excuses for why you have too much crap (which you're still doing) and for why you couldn't possibly get rid of it. You are not unique and special and it's not a requirement of living somewhere or growing older that you acquire tons of useless poo poo. You owned your home for the "last couple years" lol - not 15 years spanning 6 roommates and an ex-husband and every single thing from literally your entire family line. I think I've done incredibly well for what I'm faced with at this point, considering the circumstances. The first posts focused on volume because gently caress that was what I was thinking at the time. I'm a single woman with a full house full of pretty nice stuff and a lot of extraneous poo poo, and it's overwhelming, and I think it would be overwhelming for any normal person who hasn't moved since it only took a couple of pickup trucks., like YOU, two years ago. Except for me, I was 23, not 38 like I am now. I wasn't claiming to be unique in any way. I assume there at least a small number of goons who are also moving for the first time as ADULTS with REAL poo poo and the logistics of it are confusing and weird. I never moved as a kid.. We lived in the same house for my whole life until I moved out, so I've never done the whole house pack-up and move EVER, and the random strangers visiting, while you are living there, so it's loving BIZZARE. I've never rented movers or a big truck. I appreciate the advice that I was given and I'm using it, but if you'd read any farther, I'm not planning on selling for almost a year, so I'm not being SLOOOOOWWW. I just still live here and I'm not going to sit on the floor and stare at blank walls while I eat a sandwich off my one favorite plate for the next year. I also have two dogs, so it's not like I can get anything cleaned or sanitized for like 10 months. I dare you to be 80 years old and have no "useless poo poo". It just HAPPENS. And most of it isn't useless anyways. It's just "very rarely useful" but you're happy as poo poo when you have it at the right time, which is the loving problem.
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# ? Apr 12, 2017 06:16 |
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I'd show pictures of my house so people could actually help me with individual things and maybe see that I'm honestly somewhere in the dead center of weirdo minimalist and creepy hoarder, but you can't do that here without weird judgements. Not to mention that I've taken pictures of my house before, for roommate searches and it always looks more compact and/or cluttered on camera because of a normal lens. It blows for selling or renting, that camera's generally do that. People always take normal furniture out of rooms for the camera pictures, because what looks normal in real life looks really cluttered in a picture, no matter how good your photographer is. One thing that I cannot deal with in rental ads is completely sterile white walls and beige carpet and zero furniture. I don't want to live in a mental hospital. It looks awful. But it's the new normal. SO CREEPY
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# ? Apr 12, 2017 06:30 |
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You know what they say, the camera adds 10 pounds of TV Guide magazines from 1984.
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# ? Apr 12, 2017 15:21 |
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IRQ posted:You know what they say, the camera adds 10 pounds of TV Guide magazines from 1984. Shut up IRQ (sometimes in my head, I say IRK, because I'm a silly person) This genuinely made me laugh though. It also made me think of TV guide for the first time in a billion years, and trying to find out when MacGuyver would be on again because the Redskins preempted the broadcast. It was always like next Wednesday at 11:00 pm or something. Man I'm old. I'm outside DC but sometimes I could get my dad to climb up on the roof and change the antenna to get Baltimore stations so that I could watch MacGuyver during a football blackout. I'd miss the first 20 minutes, but that's just how it worked back in the day.
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# ? Apr 14, 2017 06:15 |
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I have been renting my whole adult life (last 12 years) and have probably moved over 10 times. I am absolutely not trying to be rude. But to be honest, most of your furniture can be sold. You don't need to keep your tables or TV cabinets or old couches. It's usually less of a hassle to buy new (or used) furniture that 1) will fit your new place 2) be delivered to your door. Imagine that you get rid of all your furniture. Will it make moving easier? Yes. Would it make showing the house easier? Yes. Would it make you suffer? No. Put all your other stuff in boxes and remove them from the main rooms when showing the house. It's OK to keep a few sentimental items, but that fact that it seems everything holds sentimental value to you is probably the reason moving seems almost impossibly difficult. Also, people want "sterile white rooms" because they want to imagine how their own lives could look in there. They don't want to move into "your life".
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# ? Apr 14, 2017 22:36 |
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DoggPickle posted:I'm outside DC but sometimes I could get my dad to climb up on the roof and change the antenna to get Baltimore stations so that I could watch MacGuyver during a football blackout. I'd miss the first 20 minutes, but that's just how it worked back in the day.
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# ? Apr 15, 2017 02:12 |
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I inherited a house full of crap and just about lost my mind trying to deal, until I separated the task of item "triage," from item moving. Yeah, it's cool if you can do the hoarder-show thing where everything goes into piles on your lawn but unless you've got a team of people with you, it's not going to work. My method involved a lot of hefty plastic bins that had good handles and could stack (these are the best I've found) and several colours of tape. When it comes to quality clothes/books/whatever, allow yourself a bin for keepers--but only that bin. If you put something in, and the lid won't close, take something out. Can't decide? Decide later, but you still only get one bin. Sometimes it's useful to do that in piles, rather than one-at-a-time. Over the next year, most of what went in that bin ended up getting donated, I just needed to get out of crisis-mode before getting realistic about things my mother had loved. I ended up hiring a professional organiser and her team to do the basement. It saved me, but it was a little hard to watch things happen so fast. I'm not a hoarder, but I got a glimpse of how they probably feel. It was like running downhill and occasionally losing my balance a bit. Every day, I made myself acknowledge that mistakes were going to get made, but that was a worthwhile price for getting the drat thing done in two weeks instead of a year. And for the rest, I'm just gonna quote my advice from another thread: quote:It is really, really hard to get rid of books--physically, emotionally, and mentally--so here's some practical advice:
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# ? Apr 15, 2017 19:47 |
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lizard_phunk posted:Also, people want "sterile white rooms" because they want to imagine how their own lives could look in there. They don't want to move into "your life". Yes and no. People don't necessarily want your poo poo, but staging some rooms can help. Mind you, it's better to get a person who knows what they're doing instead of just keeping some of your old crap in there.
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# ? Apr 15, 2017 20:07 |
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Staging is something for the listing agent to figure out, not the customer. Any competent agent will have a stager and probably a designer to advise you. You're about to cut a very big check to this person, make them do the work and bring in some of their team. Also, a competent real estate photographer can shoot around a multitude of sins.
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# ? Apr 15, 2017 21:28 |
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Unload My Head posted:Staging is something for the listing agent to figure out, not the customer. Yes to all of this. I didn't mean to imply it's something that OP should do for themselves, just that staging is usually better than having a place 100% empty.
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# ? Apr 15, 2017 22:05 |
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Unload My Head posted:Also, a competent real estate photographer can shoot around a multitude of sins. The photos on my mom's listing (closed thursday yay!) were downright crazy. Made the house look cavernous, open, and well lit. It's big but not that big, quite dark and not all that open. DoggPickle posted:I'm outside DC but sometimes I could get my dad to climb up on the roof and change the antenna to get Baltimore stations so that I could watch MacGuyver during a football blackout. I'd miss the first 20 minutes, but that's just how it worked back in the day. Yeah same, we could intermittently get Baltimore stations but then dad started stealing cable and all was well. Now I still live in the area but my windows face northwest so I can't get a fuckin signal from either city.
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# ? Apr 15, 2017 22:21 |
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IRQ posted:The photos on my mom's listing (closed thursday yay!) were downright crazy. Made the house look cavernous, open, and well lit. It's big but not that big, quite dark and not all that open. Any realtor who takes photos on an iPhone (and a number of them do) should be taken out and flogged. You're getting a big commission, hire a professional photographer with a proper camera and appropriate lenses.
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# ? Apr 15, 2017 23:45 |
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PT6A posted:Any realtor who takes photos on an iPhone (and a number of them do) should be taken out and flogged. You're getting a big commission, hire a professional photographer with a proper camera and appropriate lenses. Yeah no poo poo, I would happily recommend the agent who sold mom's house. It was under contract in less than a week and the staging and photos were top notch.
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# ? Apr 16, 2017 01:55 |
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PT6A posted:Any realtor who takes photos on an iPhone (and a number of them do) should be taken out and flogged. You're getting a big commission, hire a professional photographer with a proper camera and appropriate lenses. Haha, it always amazes me how often I see this. We're starting to bubble again so the pool of agents is getting much larger and much lazier/shittier. Real estate photography is a specialized skill too. When I used to flip houses it would always surprise me how well they could make a place look. Lousy agents will just bring in their cousin who "totally did some photography in college and has a camera already". Sucks for the seller since most people aren't on it enough to follow up and look at their own listing, or they fall into a sunk cost fallacy and don't want to fire their agent. To the OP: I can't help with your hoarder piles or furniture sorting or whatever, but I can tell you to start searching for an agent. Referrals are key here. Meet a few of them. Hire the one who seems competent and eager. Like hiring a lawyer, sometimes you want a shark. Be honest with them about your timeframe for listing, but don't be afraid to get someone lined up ahead of time. They can advise you on all sorts of issues like what you want your contractor(s) to repair before the listing, what price you can expect to list at, when exactly you should list, ect.
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# ? Apr 16, 2017 03:21 |
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Unload My Head posted:
Counterpoint: use whoever IRQs mom used
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# ? Apr 16, 2017 10:45 |
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Scudworth posted:Counterpoint: use whoever IRQs mom used If IRQ is local to the OP that is an excellent idea. If they are not it's a terrible idea. Real estate is very region specific, especially for a listing agent. They need to know the local market to be able to effectively sell the house.
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# ? Apr 16, 2017 15:12 |
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DoggPickle posted:But you still gain poo poo over the years. My mom passed away last year, so my family just cleared out the basement of my parents' house. 1400 square feet shelved like a grocery store. Fabric, dolls (her hobby), Books, puzzles, games, kids toys from all our childhoods (I'm the baby of the family at 45). They built the house in 1985 and my dad still lives in it. So yeah, I know what you're dealing with. Step 1 is pick the most sentimental stuff and get good storage for it. Plastic tubs are really nice, easy to carry and stack, and semi permanent. DoggPickle posted:You have a weed epidemic so you get an edger and a sprayer and 10 types of weed killer and bunch of other crap DoggPickle posted:Your husband has a "photographic" phase, so you end up with some really nice cameras and equipment. Lenses, bags, stands, lights, actual cameras, etc. Uggh then he has his MUSICIAN phase. :/ ( I was paying for all this, so he left it) DoggPickle posted:You have to go out of town and can't find a great place to leave the dog except with some friends who really didn't want to take the dog at all, so now you have a nicer dog crate and a fancy rear end bag to try to shove her into for traveling, and new toys and blankets DoggPickle posted:You need to plant a tree and now you own two new loving shovels DoggPickle posted:You wanna have a cookout with a bunch of friends, and it ends up at your house and people leave their cooler and then move away and now you have bought a really nice blender to make margaritas and you've used it three times in 5 years DoggPickle posted:You had to repaint the loving ceiling when the toilet leaked and you have cans of primer and ceiling white (times 100 equivalent instances) DoggPickle posted:You gain an egg slicer, a pizza stone, a panini press, an ice-cream scoop, a spoon rest, a set of shrimp forks, wine glasses, martini glasses, shot glasses, a goddamn cake carrier, a plate that literally only fits deviled eggs, a crab-cracker and a hand-held stick blender, a rice cooker, a slow-cooker, and some stupid retro toaster. DoggPickle posted:I also have a few things from another roommate that I don't LOVE, but he died last year at 35 of the world's most random heart-attack. I can't just chuck those things. The gift things. Not his old random poo poo that he left here, but actual presents that were thoughtful, even if they aren't my favorite. It seems disrespectful to me. Is that silly sentiment? Or human nature? DoggPickle posted:But I am trying to detach. As for selling vs renting, keep in mind the main benefit to owning is equity growth. Value goes up and your payments start to land in the bank. The cost of upkeep and stuff is just the price you pay. When you rent you pay all of that for someone else. If you're at terrible loan to value figures, then yeah bail out. But if my math is right there's 13 years left on the mortgage, you should be really banking those payments by this time. You could be sitting on a hell of a nest egg in another decade. And you keep asking about visitors, are you talking about showing the house? They will schedule those so you have time to clean up, then usually you will leave for an hour while the agent shows them the house. No awkwardness for you, and the agent is responsible for making sure they don't shoplift. Oh, and one more thing: Old useless furniture can be re-purposed to be cool new furniture. A buddy of mine took one of those old secret record player tables and he gutted it and put modern electronics in it. Now it's an iPod dock with nice speakers and a subwoofer. Still looks vintage and is proudly on display in his living room. LloydDobler fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Apr 26, 2017 |
# ? Apr 26, 2017 23:10 |
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Do whatever cleaning and sorting you want to do. Get a storage locker with a free first month or a $1 first month. Put all the poo poo you think you want to keep in there. Then after a month, throw it all away. You didn't actually need or want it. That's why you rented a big garbage room to hide it in. It's all garbage. You wouldn't have put it in there if you actually cared or wanted it.
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# ? Apr 28, 2017 15:49 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 09:29 |
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Waltzing Along posted:Then after a month, throw it all away. You didn't actually need or want it. That's why you rented a big garbage room to hide it in.
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# ? Apr 29, 2017 03:06 |