giving away stuff

[Khan]

Have any other retirees found themselves giving away stuff (furniture plants money)?

 

[BlondieMM]

Oh yeah!

We plan to downsize to a large RV for a couple years once we sell our large house, so we are ditching everything we don't want to keep for the next house!! Many things are going to our children and lots more to Goodwill. Why pay to store or haul what you no longer need or want??

 

[Cattusbabe]

We used Freecycle to de-clutter our house. Most items went that way. What did not go via Freecycle was dropped off at a donation center like the Salvation Army or Goodwill to be sold or trashed.

 

[CuppaJoe]

Apologies to Oscar Wilde and UncleMick: I have nothing to give but my genius. Heh heh heh.

 

[bbbamI]

Have any other retirees found themselves giving away stuff (furniture plants money)?

I look forward to the day when I can give away more money.

 

[robcanuck]

Culled 4 boxes of books from the shelves today - they're going to the church book sale next week.

 

[CyclingInvestor]

One of my first orders of business when I retired was to go thru all my old stuff and throw most of it away. I never was much of a collector anyway, but I probably tossed 80% of what I had.

 

[Nords]

Have any other retirees found themselves giving away stuff (furniture plants money)?

Heck yeah. Every piece of furniture that enters the house has to be counterbalanced by one that leaves, either via Craigslist or FreeCycle. Same for clothing. Hasn't happened for power tools yet, though.

There are some parts of fruit season where we'll leave a bag of produce on a neighbor's doorstep, ring the doorbell, and run away fast.

One of our ER indulgences is that any kid with the guts to ring our doorbell and solicit a donation or sell something is probably going to get what they want-- especially if it's Girl Scout cookies or Boy Scout popcorn. Local School Kine Cookies, Zippy's chili, and Koala Moa hulihuli chicken works pretty well, too. Great way to meet the neighbors.

Giving away money was fraught with drama and solicitations until we discovered DonorsChoose.org and Fidelity's donor-advised fund. Now it's totally anonymous.

 

[W2R]

One of my first orders of business when I retired was to go thru all my old stuff and throw most of it away. I never was much of a collector anyway, but I probably tossed 80% of what I had.

This is what I am doing, too.

The cost of moving my furniture (and most of my other stuff) north is more than it is worth. Last weekend we went to Goodwill and talked to them about the furniture. I got a phone number to call for pickup, when I have retired and I am ready to get rid of my furniture. Forgot to ask if they will give me a receipt for tax purposes. They have a drive-through for dropping off items, too.

It was discouraging to see what Goodwill is like these days. All they seemed to have was clothes - - racks of blouses marked at $3.50 each, for example. Very little of anything else. It wasn't like that forty years ago.

I have been ruthlessly culling out the worthless items and throwing them out, for the past couple of years. It's amazing how much of my "stuff" is really worth nothing, and is nothing I would ever use, and yet wasn't thrown out.

I will probably take a few items of furniture and other things with me when we move. But really, anything I can get rid of now will make the move that much less stressful. I won't be taking my sofa, easy chair, coffee table, end tables, master bedroom set, dining room set, or kitchenette set, for example.

I got rid of my lawnmower a few weeks ago. My lawn guy wanted to buy it. It was originally $600. He is a hard working man and I doubt he would have let me give it to him, so I sold it to him for $100.

 

[Walt34]

For a full year before we moved we were throwing out huge volumes of stuff, to the point that DW went out and bought an oversize trash can. And we still moved a lot of stuff that we later threw out when we unpacked it.

But we were only moving about 80 miles, and we moved everything ourselves that we could lift and would fit in the pickup truck. All the movers had to deal with was the heavy furniture and about a dozen boxes.

We are still in the process of culling stuff - basically anything that hasn't been used for a year gets thrown out or given away, like the leaf shredder that I'm going to give to my sister the next time we go to DE.

 

[rescueme]

It's amazing how much of my "stuff" is really worth nothing, and is nothing I would ever use, and yet wasn't thrown out.

You must know my DW (or be a long lost sister )...

 

[hankster]

We sold our house in January and live in a smaller rental. The move was a good excuse to go through everything and de-clutter. I must have hauled 4 pickup truck loads of stuff to either Goodwill or the dump. The kids got a bunch of items to eBay and have a garage sale. Most of the remaining items are stored in labeled plastic tubs with lids.

We could not have cared less about getting money out of anything. Seeing the clutter vanish was its own reward.

 

[NYEXPAT]

Before moving to Peru, I packed my life in 3 suitcases. A truly liberating experience!

 

[REWahoo]

Before moving to Peru, I packed my life in 3 suitcases. A truly liberating experience!

I think you mentioned you were divorced. I'm surprised you had enough left to fill three suitcases...

 

[CuppaJoe]

....

One of our ER indulgences is that any kid with the guts to ring our doorbell and solicit a donation or sell something is probably going to get what they want-- especially if it's Girl Scout cookies or Boy Scout popcorn....

Yeah, that's a good one, giving away kindness. I got to know the neighbors that way as a kid; learned about senility from the old lady who forgot she bought cookies from me, "oh, no, I bought from my granddaughter." She didn't believe the paper with her signature on it; at the very next delivery, someone asked if I had any extra boxes, there went her cookies. She was the one who kept her house dark on Halloween. Some people on this forum say it is hard to get to know people in a small town, that could be because some of the old timers socialize only with their extended family(?)

 

[FinanceDude]

I think you mentioned you were divorced. I'm surprised you had enough left to fill three suitcases...

He had a good lawyer. What he DID NOT Say is how much $$$ he had left after the divorce........

 

[Bestwifeever]

One of our ER indulgences is that any kid with the guts to ring our doorbell and solicit a donation or sell something is probably going to get what they want-- especially if it's Girl Scout cookies or Boy Scout popcorn. Local School Kine Cookies, Zippy's chili, and Koala Moa hulihuli chicken works pretty well, too. Great way to meet the neighbors.

Us too! We are ridiculously generous, too--we ask what they recommend and buy those, then we buy it, then we buy even more. I like to think it helps the kids learn sales skills (what is life if not sales) and feel some success, but really we like having the products too. And seeing how excited they are with scoring a big sale.

For donations we make them explain what the donation is for. If they're directly involved (i.e., they're walking themselves in a walk-a-thon or they play the flute for the band trip) we're a little more generous.

 

[Moemg]

I've gotten rid of tons of stuff . Now if I could only get my SO to do the same .

 

[FinanceDude]

I've gotten rid of tons of stuff . Now if I could only get my SO to do the same .

If I had control, our house would have 75% less stuff in it. I already told DW that when the basement is finished off, if it becomes a storage area for "stuff" I am going to take it all to goodwill, no matter WHOSE it is............

 

[Brat]

Kahn, BlondieMM, we are doing just what you describe. After the garage sale I put 4 times on freecycle yesterday, 3 are now gone. We have decided to prepare for our eventual move to smaller digs, stuff must go!!

Now if the house would sell...

 

[REWahoo]

Now if the house would sell...

Have you had any nibbles?

 

[ksr]

I've gotten rid of tons of stuff . Now if I could only get my SO to do the same .

These are words I could have written. I am a perpetual de-clutterer; he likes to save anything and everything "just in case". I've been tempted to just start getting rid of some of the stuff he'd never even miss, but I don't have it in me to do it.

My general rule now is "one in, one out". I apply that to almost anything non-consumable - books, clothing, furniture, gadgets, etc. It helps, but we still have too much stuff in this house.

 

[travelover]

I have been listing stuff on Craigslist for $1 lately and this seems to get rid of a lot of the reactive responses for items listed in their free section or on Freecycle. I was getting a flood of "save it for me" responses from people that wouldn't pick the stuff up. Also, the people that end of up the stuff seem to really want or need it.

Because I live in the ex-burbs, I can't just put it on the curb and give an address to pick it up.

 

[ziggy29]

I think I've mentioned before that when we moved out of our 2250 sf home in Houston to an 1150 sf house out here, it was obvious we'd have way more stuff than room in the new house.

So shortly before we moved away, we invited friends and neighbors over for what we called a "housecooling" party. As the opposite of a housewarming, guests were told that they had to leave by taking a "gift" from the host -- we put a bunch of stuff we were giving away in one room and made a party of giving it all away...

 

[bbbamI]

Have you had any nibbles?

That's kind of a personal question....isn't it?....