Two Moves in Five Years – Sorting, donating and selling

In 2014 I prepared to sell the house my ex-husband and I had lived in for nineteen years with our two daughters. I had a lot of stuff to get rid of before I put the house on the market. I wanted our house to look as good as possible to get the highest selling price.

I sold old furniture and gently used kitchen appliances on Craigslist. I donated things to thrift stores that I no longer loved or hadn’t used for a long time. I gave away broken and old things on Craigslist instead of paying to take them to the dump. I put lots of old magazines and papers in the recycling bin. I organized, sorted, and filed the things I decided to keep. I bought inexpensive modern furniture and light fixtures on Craigslist, and sold or gave away the ones I was replacing. It was a lot of work, but it felt good. The house looked more appealing, the energy in the house felt better, and I got the price I wanted for the house.

In 2018 we moved again. I sold furniture, clothes and other household items on FaceBook Marketplace and Bidding Wars sites. We were merging two households, so we had duplicates of some things and too much furniture. My main goal was to not pay to move things that we didn’t love or use. My partner was reluctant to let go of some of his things but I was persuasive.

The residents of the house we were moving into offered us a package deal to purchase most of their furniture and a few household items because they were not a fit for their new home. I found myself again making decisions about which tables, bedframes, and barbecues to keep, and then selling the rest.

My mom taught me that everything has a place, and that after you use something it should go back into its place. I also learned that an organized space meant less time searching for things and avoided the cost of buying something (like a measuring tape, screwdriver or sewing kit) because I couldn’t find the one I already had.

In addition to decluttering, painting and decorating each house, I also cleaned the energy using dowsing techniques, white sage, energy disks and other energy clearing methods. I wanted to remove any stuck patterns of negative emotions so that the space felt good to people who walked in.

When I work with clients to help them transform their homes, I use my 15+ years experience as a life coach to help them move through the emotional attachment and difficult decisions involved in the process.