No wonder I can't sell my items

My mother grew up dirt poor. When she became grown-up, she only wanted new things. She had enough of junk.

The items in the pic look like crap to me, and................I bought an antique gate leg drop leaf table. I also bought a brand new brass bound steamer trunk to use for storage & as a coffee table. Didn't buy them at the same time, but the same thing happened: The first night, when it was dark, millions of cockroaches had laid their eggs and it was everybody's birthday.

I'll never get over it and I never bought anyone's stuff ever again and never bought new from Orchard Street, Lower East Side again either. Ugh. Scarred for life.
 
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@debodun If the Lord's willing and the creeks don't rise (as we used to say in Texas), that picture will be a giant wakeup call for you. Please just give it all up. Please. For your sake, for the sake of your health, for the sake of your peace of mind, for the sake of a peaceful and relaxing retirement in your new home, for heaven's sake...for the sake of your back and the exhausting labor needed to tote all your stuff out and back every time you have another yard sale. And for the sake of your new neighbors who are probably not going to look kindly on weekly/monthly yard sales.

I've downsized more than once, and I can tell you that I've never missed any of that *stuff* because that's what it was...stuff. And now I live quite happily in less than 300sf with no clutter (and I can clean my place in 30 minutes!).

Many years ago, my mother was moving long distance and everything she owned except the clothes on her back and in her luggage was lost when the moving van crashed and burned. She was in her 50s at the time. She lost family mementos, photos, *things* right down to her dishes and pots and pans. She had to start over from scratch. A year or so later, she said it gave her a whole new perspective on what was and wasn't important in the overall scheme of things.
 
Pepper said:
My mother grew up dirt poor. When she became grown-up, she only wanted new things. She had enough of junk.

The items in the pic look like crap to me, and................I bought an antique gate leg drop leaf table. I also bought a brand new brass bound steamer trunk to use for storage & as a coffee table. Didn't buy them at the same time, but the same thing happened: The first night, when it was dark, millions of cockroaches had laid their eggs and it was everybody's birthday.

I'll never get over it and I never bought anyone's stuff ever again and never bought new from Orchard Street, Lower East Side again either. Ugh. Scarred for life.
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My mother was the same but had the opposite reaction. Born in 1920 and her father died of TB in 1928. The whole family was thrown into a tailspin and then in 1929, the great depression hit. They were dirt poor the whole time she was growing up. To this day, if there's 2 beans or a small piece of potato left over from a meal, she'll wrap them up and save them for later, just in case - bless her heart!
 
GeorgiaXplant said:
@debodun If the Lord's willing and the creeks don't rise (as we used to say in Texas), that picture will be a giant wakeup call for you. Please just give it all up. Please. For your sake, for the sake of your health, for the sake of your peace of mind, for the sake of a peaceful and relaxing retirement in your new home, for heaven's sake...for the sake of your back and the exhausting labor needed to tote all your stuff out and back every time you have another yard sale. And for the sake of your new neighbors who are probably not going to look kindly on weekly/monthly yard sales.

I've downsized more than once, and I can tell you that I've never missed any of that *stuff* because that's what it was...stuff. And now I live quite happily in less than 300sf with no clutter (and I can clean my place in 30 minutes!).

Many years ago, my mother was moving long distance and everything she owned except the clothes on her back and in her luggage was lost when the moving van crashed and burned. She was in her 50s at the time. She lost family mementos, photos, *things* right down to her dishes and pots and pans. She had to start over from scratch. A year or so later, she said it gave her a whole new perspective on what was and wasn't important in the overall scheme of things.
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Then what do I do with it????
 
Pepper said:
I'll never get over it and I never bought anyone's stuff ever again
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That was understandably a very awful experience, and would change a person's decisions in the future! :oops::(

I mostly had very good experiences with buying used things from other people, and from shops, and I was very thankful that I could manage to have the items, when I had very little of anything.
Now, I would be very, very fussy , about any of such items I'd consider buying or accepting.
 
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When I first moved into my new house a few weeks ago, a young man walking by asked if I had any odd jobs. Chatting with him, I found out he was trying to earn money to buy a microwave for his youth group. I told him to come back in a few days. He did, and by then I had bought a new microwave. We gave him the one we had. Why try to sell items when someone can make use of them. What does a few pennies matter?
 
When I moved and downsized, I took stuff into work. The production workers drew numbers to see what order they would pick what I brought in.
I put a free ad in Craig's list and got rid of both bedroom sets. One of them went to a lady who had just spent considerable time in the hospital, so now she had a real bed.
 
StarSong said:
Is this in your home, HC?
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Kind of you to think it might be. My wife and I used to scour junk shops, antique fairs and many other such places to fill our home with furniture from a bygone age. Back then it was considered junk to be thrown out, nobody wanted it, but we loved it.

We also had the good fortune of my wife's father. He was a French polisher and a wonderful furniture restorer. It never occurred to me back then to photograph a before and after appearance of my late father-in-law's exceptional talent. That sled is just the sort of project that he was so good at. How I would love to have a before photo of the coffee table that he produced:

coffee table.jpg
 

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