How to Sell Everything You Own | Uneven Sidewalks Travel Blog

Cachi Bachi: [kaw-chee baw-chee] / (noun) 1. A slang-like word used by Spanish speakers to refer to knick knacks, sentimental treasures, “stuff”, junk, etc. 2. Whatever is filling up your garage. 3. The things you know you have, but you can’t find.

Garage filled with boxes, clothes, and tools - trying to decide how to sell everything you own

Our Collection of Cachi Bachi

Why would you want to sell everything you own!? In order to leave the country for longer than a month, we knew we had to do something with our beloved belongings – our cars, boat, household furniture, clothes, garage tools, kitchen “tools”, RC planes and cars – sentimental things were all big parts of our lives. (*Gasp* you’re not selling your RC car I bought for your 11th birthday, you loved that thing! -dad)

They have a phrase for all this we learned in Spanish – “cachi bachi.” That was what all our belongings amounted to, and we had to come to that realization ourselves. We had to sell everything we owned, but where to start?

“Put it all in a storage shed”

The most common answer people suggested was to just store everything because “we’d need it all again someday.” Do you really believe that? That was out of the question because it costs so much for a storage shed. The value of all our belongings didn’t justify spending a few thousand dollars a year and just have to come home and deal with it in a few months or years. Even if we did have super valuable stuff worth over $50,000, I certainly wouldn’t want to cram it in some shed and worry about it the entire time. Someone would have a few months to figure out how to pick my lock and steal everything.

The Solution

Our solution – Sell it all. That decision to liquidate was surprisingly easy. The hard part was how to sell a thousand big and little things without spending every waking minute in the next few months doing so.

How to sell everything you own: Where to begin…

To make a long story short, we had 3 huge garage sales, 80 ebay sales, and probably a hundred local craigslist deals. And, we ended up donating an entire truckload to the thrift store after realizing that selling things for 25 cents at another garage sale was a waste of time and we’d rake in less money than we could regain with a tax deduction we’d get from donating it. Someone mentioned the tax deduction part to me near the end of our sell-a-thon, and it really helped with the last bit when our patience and time was wearing thin.

The most difficult thing was to realize that our “stuff” that we paid so much for, that was so useful to us, and that was still in great condition was for the most part worth next to nothing. It took an incredible amount of time and effort to sell even our most valuable possessions like cars, furniture, and big tools.

Sometimes we would be so burnt out one of us would suggest boxing everything else up in the truck and just doing a back-up-and-stop-quick move in front of the local Goodwill store. One thing that kept us going on our selling spree was the thought of how much we had spent on something. It was very hard to see things go for such a discount.

The other thing that helped to motivate us the most to sell everything was the price it would cost to store it all. We figured that once we returned from our trip we would probably be so used to living without most everything that we wouldn’t use it anyways.

The Storage “Shelf”

Full disclosure – we did end up storing about 10 plastic boxes in Alyssa’s parents’ attic. We had some expensive things that we were confident we would use whenever and wherever we returned, and didn’t want to take a huge loss in selling them. It wasn’t for sentimental things, though. For example, we had some good camping gear that we didn’t want to take a huge loss in selling. We also had received some nice kitchen things for a wedding gift and didn’t want to sell them for $5 at a garage sale.

We set ourselves a limit of storing as many boxes as would fit flat in the back of a pickup truck (not piled on either!). But to be honest, if we didn’t have a convenient place to store a few things and if the cost to buy back things when we returned wasn’t an issue, we would have sold it all, and we envy those who do. If at all possible, keep the goal in mind to sell everything you own!

Advice from the other side of the fence

There are very few things that you can break even with or even make money on by re-selling. The only things we made money on were: a Toyota Tundra truck we had bought off craigslist 2 years earlier, a piano we had picked up for free, and an electric toothbrush that was bid up by some over-excited ebay buyers. Unless you have collectables or some hot new tech toy, don’t count on getting a “like-new” price for anything.

The good news – you can sell anything if you put a low enough price on it.

The 4 Best Ways to Sell Everything You Own

There are 4 main tactics to empty out your house and make as much money as you can in the least time possible. Read below for our tips on how to sell everything you own from your car to your couch and extra shoes. Each method of selling is useful for certain things, so I broke this guide up into different articles.

Craigslist

Craigslist is a great tool for getting the most money from your stuff with the least amount of time and effort. It works good for selling big things like vehicles and furniture, and other things that are popular or in-season. It can be tough in remote areas, but In populated areas in the US it works wonderfully. Save yourself some hassle and set a minimum price limit on anything you post – somewhere between $20 to $50.

Read the full article on selling with Craigslist.

eBay

eBay is amazing because it connects so many people in so many different places. You can almost guarantee that somewhere, someone is looking for exactly what you want to sell. Works great for popular electronics, antiques, collectable trinkets, and household things that you would be able to package up and send in the mail.

Garage Sales

Garage sales are the best place to sell everything you haven’t been able to sell for a higher price online earlier. They are easy to advertise for, and you will probably get a lot people, assuming you are in a good-sized city and it isn’t snowing out. Don’t expect to get top dollar for your treasures, though.

Thrift Stores

When you are at the end of your patience or time, load up the truck (or trailer) and help out the good folks out at your local thrift store or Salvation Army. There’s a point of diminishing returns where you have to spend a lot of time to sell the last of the small things that won’t bring much money. Wherever that line is, save yourself from the agony and use your time on better things like packing, learning Spanish, or finishing organizing your life.

Insider tip – Be sure to take pictures beforehand of everything you donate so you can get the biggest tax deduction possible for your charitable donation in the eyes of the IRS. Jam the pictures and the donation receipt from the thrift store in your tax folder. While you’re at it, scan it and save it on your computer.

Other sites

There are so many other sites that can help you sell your things. Every new place you can find to post something for sale increases the audience that sees it and your chances of getting a good price for it. Other places we used include: facebook, autotrader.com, yapo.com, quebarato.com, and friends & family.

Amazon Trade-In

For a simple no-hassle way to sell your things, just trade them in to Amazon. You can trade-in your used things using their website and they’ll send you money to use on Amazon. It doesn’t matter where you bought it originally. They even pay for the shipping to send in your used things!

Click here to try out Amazon Trade-In today.