When we moved from Watertown, MA to San Deigo in 2011, we downsized from a 2,000 sqft house to a 1,000 sqft condo. Our two boys were both in college in the Northeast and was time to get rid of the family homestead and move on to new adventures. A job transfer for me and a new teaching assignment for Sue.
This move was always meant to be temporary until we retired for good. Downsizing in our MA house took about 6 months of sorting, selling and giving stuff away. We sold that house in one weekend (lucky!) and soon bought the condo in San Diego. Fast forward to 2018 and it is time to downsize again. We started in January and wanted to be out of our place by my retirement date of March 31.
Our NH condo was already furnished, so we would not be taking any furniture or big items. We sold a few items on Craigslist, but this was slow and buyers were unreliable. Then, Sue discovered this Facebook group called “Buy Nothing Point Loma”. This is a group that facilitates removing things that people no longer want and putting them into the hands of people that want them. Nothing can be charged for the item. It’s like recycling for stuff! Sue posted pictures of several items a day on Facebook and a caravan of mini vans came to our door to collect things. Our stuff started flying off the shelves. We started in January and didn’t stop till we walked out the door at the end of March.
We offered all our furniture to the buyers of our condo and at first they refused. Two days later, they called back and said they would take it. They were converting there existing home into a rental and used this as an opportunity to rent their place out furnished. Now they could walk into our place and just unpack the suitcases. In the end, we had about half of our garage filled with stuff we wanted to take with us. Mostly, sports equipment, tools, clothes and well, stuff! We debated on weather to U-Haul it or ship it to NH. We really didn’t want to drive a U-Haul cross country because we had other more fun cross country trips planned. In the end, it was cheaper to ship it, so that’s what we did.