How to Successfully Sell your Items Before Moving

Moves are stressful, there is no doubt about that! However, moving also gives you the perfect opportunity to throw away, donate, or make some money off of the clutter you’ve been piling up over the years. Nowadays, with the upcoming of Craigslist and Kijiji, you can get even more money back from your unwanted items. You have an entire city of potential buyers available, not just those who happen to wander into your yard. To learn the best ways to sell your items before moving (and make the most money for it to) read on and follow our fabulous moving sale guide below!

Make an Inventory of What Stays and What Goes:

This is one of the harder parts of selling your stuff! Go through everything you own and if you no longer feel like you need it, or you haven’t used it in a while, just throw it away! The best way to do this is to go room by room. In each room make an inventory of want you to want to get rid of and set those items aside so they are easy to distinguish from the items you chose to keep. At this point decide how much you want for each item and write it down. Also, take a few photos of each object. This way you have everything you will need to advertise these products online.

Advertise your Items/Sale Online:

Like mentioned earlier, now that we have different auction and buy/sell websites at our disposal, we can sell our items without hoping that people will wander into our yard. Using the prices you determined above and the photos that you took, you can easily plaster these all over the web! Our best recommendations: Kijiji, Craigslist, and your local Facebook buy/sell groups. Pro-tip: People like to haggle! If you have a certain price in mind that you really want to make on an item, add a few extra dollars to your original asking price so that people feel like they’ve ‘won’ when they convince you to go lower. A vast majority of your larger items should be able to be sold through this method.

Of course, smaller items are usually harder to sell online as people aren’t willing to spend their time and money driving across town for something they could buy brand new for only a few dollars more. This is where a physical yard sale can come in handy!

Host your Yard Sale:

Before you host your yard sale, you are going to want to get the word out. You can advertise your yard sale in the same places as you advertised individual items. On top of that, you can also advertise these on local garage sale websites, through hang up signs, passing out flyers, or, on sunny weekend days, put your stuff out front and just see what happens. A physical yard sale is great for smaller items, as people are more likely to make these smaller impulse purchases when the products are right in front of them! This will help you get rid of more of the small junk that isn’t easily sold online.

Donate the Leftovers:

Of course, it is nearly impossible to get rid of everything you are trying to sell. It might be tempting just to give up at this point and keep the leftover clutter. However, I encourage you not to. You already made the decision to get rid of it, now it is time to stick to your guns! Depending on the items, you may be able to donate them at a local shelter. This is a win-win as you manage to declutter and feel great while doing it! Many shelters are always in need of donations so do some research. Any junk you don’t want may go a long way in helping someone in need!