Before moving abroad, we sold everything we owned through Craigslist, eBay, yard sales, consignment shops, electronic buyback websites, and even to family and friends.
But where to begin? How did we prioritize our items into what, when, and how we sold them? Here are nine steps detailing the best time to sell your stuff, starting from one year out until the last few days before your big move.
When Really is the Best Time to Sell Your Stuff?
You can never start getting rid of your stuff too early, but you can start getting rid of your stuff too late! To keep your sanity and to truly maximize your profits, it is important to follow a general timeline to purge your home. Below, we break down exactly what we sold, when we sold it, and through which method.
1. Sell Your Stuff You Aren’t Using: 6 Months to 1 Year
The best time to sell your stuff is between one year and six months before your big move. Begin with a general purge of things that are tucked away in your basement, attic, or closets and that you haven’t touched a year or more. Make sure items are in good to excellent condition.
We focused on our guestroom closet that contained things we weren’t using, including unopened boxes from our last move. We purged the closet, sold the stuff on Craigslist, and earned roughly $1000. We also sold another $165 of knick-knacks at our community’s spring yard sale. Earning our initial $1165 was a huge motivator for us and paved our way to continue selling our stuff.
2. Sell Your Stuff You Rarely Use: 4 to 6 Months
Do you have luxury items or things you use but can live without? Sell ’em.
We sold kitchen appliances, including our wine cooler, fancy juicer, mini fridge, and bread machine. We sold doubles of anything, such as a smaller TV, an extra router, and old computer speakers. We also sold popular books, wall art, and video games that we weren’t using, either through Craigslist or online sales such as Amazon. In all honestly, it wasn’t too hard let these items go.
We also reluctantly sold our workout equipment just after Christmas, but it sold like hot cakes. Why? Because the best time to sell your stuff is when everyone is making their New Year’s resolutions.
3. Sell Your Seasonal Items: 4 to 6 Months
Sell seasonal items, including clothing, holiday related items, and sports or yard equipment. The best time to sell your stuff is right before the time of year they are in high demand.
We sold about three dozen pieces of gently used brand named clothing in addition to accessories to consignment shops. We sold our summer clothes in the early spring and our winter clothes in the early fall.
We sold our Christmas decorations in early December. The best time to sell your stuff is when you can take advantage of the seasons, and we were able to make some money off of a four foot fake Christmas tree, lights, and ornaments by timing our sales just right.
4. Sell Your Furniture in Minor Rooms: 2 to 4 Months
The best time to sell your stuff in minor rooms is not too far in advance, but give enough time to move those heavy items.
We sold all of the furniture and decor items from our guest room, guest bathroom, dining room, home office, and our balcony. Furniture was our biggest money maker, and we sold all of it through Craigslist. We also made money off of lamps, throw pillows, and curtains. It started getting difficult to see our stuff go, but the cash rolling in encouraged us.
5. Sell Your Furniture in Primary Rooms: 1 to 2 Months
Entertainment system? Gone. Coffee tables Gone. Bedroom dresser? Gone. Couch? Gone. We kept our clothes in hanging shelves (which we packed with us) and set up our TV on the coffee table. We ate dinner on the floor. A lot.
6. Sell Your Kitchen Stuff: 2 to 4 Weeks
Assuming you cook often, the best time to sell your stuff from the kitchen is towards the last few weeks.
At this point we were simultaneously trying clear out our dry pantry and fridge while getting rid of cookware, bakeware, utensils, gadgets, mixing bowls, pots and pans, etc. We found that we our smaller kitchen items sold better together in sets.
7. Sell Your Vehicle: 2 to 4 Weeks
The best time to sell your stuff, such as your last vehicle, is right before your big move, but with enough time to weigh your offers. We sold our Honda Civic through a private sale a couple weeks before our one-way flight to Thailand. It worked out perfectly because we were gone on a ‘round-the-USA trip visiting family during our final weeks in the US.
NOTE: We had two vehicles, a Ford Edge that we still made monthly payments on and a Honda Civic we owned. About two months before we moved, we sold our Ford Edge to CarMax to get rid of the monthly insurance payments, loan, and gas expenses.
8. Sell Your Master Bedroom Furniture: 1 Week
The best time to sell your stuff, such as the master bedroom furniture, is at the very end. You will thank us later!
We managed to keep the mattress and bed frame until the day we moved out, but still had to get rid of the curtains, comforter set, the master bath decor, and even the vacuum cleaner.
9. What Can’t Be Sold, Donate During the Last Few Days
Donate to the local Goodwill, homeless shelter, library, animal shelter, or YMCA. Don’t forget about friends or family members who would appreciate some free clothes or other random stuff!
During the last week in our apartment, we donated everything we couldn’t sell. We gave pantry items and cleaning products to family and donated clothes and other household items to Goodwill. We donated towels and unused flea medicine to the local animal shelter and books and magazines to the local library. If it was in good condition we gave it away; otherwise, we threw it away.
The End Result – $27,000 in Cash
Figuring out when the best time to sell your stuff can really pay off! With a little trial and error, we tackled this enormous project by breaking it into smaller, more manageable parts, month by month. It took a lot of hard work and many sacrificed evenings and weekends. Even when times got rough, we used the momentum we gained from big sales and the excitement of moving overseas to push us through those last few weeks when our sales dwindled and we were tired of giving up our evenings. In the end, we got rid of everything and were rewarded with a few light suitcases each and a well cushioned savings account.
Have you tried to purge your apartment or house and didn’t know where to start? Was there anything that was particularly difficult to sell? Do you think you could make the time and energy to sell your stuff? When do you think the best time to sell your stuff is?
Check out our recently featured post on Man Vs Debt for a more inspiration!
My husband and I are looking into doing the same as you and yours in the hopefully near futuer. I’m curious to know how you handled sentimental items? Did you get rid of those, too? Thank you.
We each had a small box that we gave to my (Angela’s) parents. The two boxes had sentimental items like photos, awards, and things from our childhood. We definitely recommend having a family member (parents, siblings) or a good friend hold onto things that are irreplaceable. But only one small box each, the same ones 8.5″x11″ printing paper gets delivered in, no more!
Yes, this seems like a good way to do it. We are going to have to start ramping up our efforts to sell very soon just over a year to our big move.
Your suggestions of selling your stuff can also apply if you don’t plan to go anywhere. I have tried but I can see that I am hoarder. Not a good thing. Making a deadline for yourself even if you are not moving is a great idea to get rid of stuff.
Indeed they can! We started this endeavor because we just wanted to get rid of the junk we had accumulated in our walk-in guest closet. As soon as we made the decision to move to Thailand, it was easy to make the transition and continue selling everything else.
We’re not planning a move any time soon but I would love to purge! No matter how hard we try not too, with 3 kids it’s easy to accumulate a lot of stuff fast! For some reason this season seems like the perfect season to purge our home of everything we don’t really need… so I’m posting on Craig’s list and planning a yard sale.. I also regularly give gently used items to shelters and our local Goodwill. I like to know those things go to people who really need them.
We made frequent trips to Goodwill and Animal shelters for some of our pet items. There was a Goodwill located right next door to the community we lived in. We met a really nice guy working there from Nepal who had so wonderful advice for us regarding our trip to live halfway around the world. Great experience for us, and we know they items we donated went to help those less fortunate. Thank you for sharing, and I we are sure many people will be happy to receive your donations. Take care!
This is such a great idea…. I should use this timeline and start to get rid of some of the items I know longer need. I need to act like I am moving and make it a priority.
We feel like we have so much more freedom to do the things we love. Carrying around such a large amount of stuff that you don’t use or even see [because it is packed away in storage] is a waste of energy and time. We hope these tips help you free up your life a little…and earn you a bit of extra cash in the meantime!
Wow this is a great post. Timing really is everything. :-)
Timing it right maximizes profits while allowing you to keep your sanity!
We’ve been through two downsizing moves in our hometown of Philadelphia, but being at another time in our lives, we were able to give our stuff away to friends and relatives and donate items. Now, we will be living in Hawaii (while my husband is on sabbatical) and then traveling in southeast Asia for a month. We’ll be gone from January through May. We have to figure out how to sublet our furnished Center City Philadelphia apartment.
It is a lot of work, but when you have something worth doing it is enough to motivate you to knock out the hard work. Makes what you want to do so much more enjoyable after you have accomplished what you needed to do to make it happen. Good luck with your apartment!
Perfect timing for this post. We are a little more than a year out from our travels and have already started selling items, but I like to see what others have done with their selling timeline.
damn man, that workout gear must have been tough to say goodbye to. I could do with that right now lol
That was just (some of) the stuff in our house and excluded our heavy duty workout equipment (prowler, sand bags, 30ft rope, dip bar, etc) kept at Chris’s office. These weights sold so fast we didn’t have time to get sad. Wish we had it here now, too!
This is a great guide. We had four garage sales in the months leading up to our trip, and sold a few items on Trade Me, which is the New Zealand equivalent of Ebay. The thing that surprised me was how long it took to sell my car. I started trying to sell it more than a month before the trip and it didn’t sell for a month after we left. Luckily my parents were able to help out with selling it. We rented our house out furnished and kept one small room with our personal stuff in it but… Read more »
We like that you rented out your house furnished, but still got rid of some things to make money. That’s a great option for people who own houses but aren’t necessarily ready to sell them when moving abroad. Cars are a big ticket item and there is a chance they don’t sell in time. Having a family member or assigning someone with power of attorney to take care of these things is also a good idea. We’re glad your car sold in the end!