I am hopefully going to embark on a move pretty soon, and it looks like I will be moving in to a furnished apartment. This kind of sucks, because we already have one apartment bursting at the seams and a whole 'nother house full of stuff in storage.
I will have a houseful of not-great furniture, a ton of books, some clothes- mostly not in great condition and more geared towards young women, and a random assortment of homewares and the like.
We don’t really have a great place to set up a garage sale.
I’m thinking of putting the furniture up on Craig’s List and selling the clothes to consignment shop (we have a few, but I hear they are picky.)
But is putting everything except the unshippable stuff on ebay a better plan? Or should I try to get a spot at the flea market? It seems like selling 200 books on ebay would be a royal PITA. Is it? Is it worth it?
Craig’s list is a good idea.
You’re right about consignment shops. Unless you stuff is exceptional, they’re likely to reject it.
Unfortunately, you should expect to take a major loss on this. Depending on what your items are worth, it might be better to donate them and take the tax deduction.
Is there a weekly flea market anywhere around you? Cart all the clothes there, and, if you can, the furniture. Consignment shops probably won’t take them if they’re ratty, but garage sale and flea market buyers might. Just don’t price them too high; maybe one or two dollars a shirt and two bucks or so for jeans. It might be more cost effective just to take them to Goodwill and claim the tax deduction, especially if the flea market charges a tabling fee. You could also flea market the furniture if you don’t want to put it on Craigslist.
I would put the books up on Half.com instead of Ebay… it can be a pain to package each one up individually but this way you don’t have to worry about clearing individual checks or cashing money orders (for all those buyers who still don’t use Paypal, and there are lots that don’t), and you can just do a big mail run every week if you don’t want to take books down to the post office every day. You also don’t have to construct individual item pages on Half. Then again, it doesn’t get as much traffic as Ebay.
You won’t make a lot of money, but you’ll get rid of a lot.
I adore eBay, but it can be very time-consuming. And you said your stuff is in not-great condition, which would be a problem for a lot of bidders. Is it vital that you make some money back on this stuff, or is it more that you just want to get rid of it? If it’s the former, Craig’s list might be a better option. If not, you can donate and get receipts for tax deductions: books to the local library or nursing home, clothes to a women’s shelter or Goodwill, furniture to AmVets, maybe?
My brother did the equivalent of an estate sale because he also didn’t have a place for a garage sale. He packed up everything he wanted to keep and moved it to my house; then he put up signs to his apartment. People walked through and bought his stuff. He ended up getting rid of pretty much everything.
Hey guys, thanks for the help! It looks like we probably have the place!
It’s pretty vital that I can get at least some money out of this- I’m hoping to get some help towards rent until I get a job. A tax deduction won’t help me at this point. I know I probably have a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff here, but I havn’t really sold anything since ebay and Craig’s List were a force.
Time isn’t much of a factor, but I like the idea of not having to deal with so many indvidual things on half.com for the books. Thanks for telling me about this.
Just a curiosity, but where are you moving to? I remember all the trouble finding employment in Santa Cruz, so I’m hoping that the job market is better where you’re heading. 
Crap, I meant that I remember your trouble finding employment in Santa Cruz; I just realized that my post sounds like I, personally, found the job market there in bad shape.