My mother-in-law’s estate sale was this weekend—not that she’s dead, far from it. But since she’s moved into the assisted living/nursing home, there’s no point in keeping rooms full of stuff or a house she no longer needs. So we needed to dispose of all those belongings, and then get the house sold.
The estate sale industry is pretty weird, at least to me. Getting the sale scheduled was a chore. I don’t know if that’s because the people who do this have other jobs or if that’s just the norm for this line of work, but everything was hard to pin down.
As a side note, the woman we bought our house from used an estate sale company before she moved out. Her parents had lived here for over 30 years, and she’d lived here with them through their illnesses and eventual death, and this place was packed with stuff (including a casket in the basement—isn’t that strange?).
They do a lot of the work, though. They sort and label everything, publicize the sale, and provide staff to work at the sale. Afterwards, they box and donate everything that’s left. In the case of the company we used, they prefer that the family not hang around during the sale. That sort of bothered Kent (what are they hiding?) but it also made sense. I can well believe that people get a little weird watching their possessions or their parents’ possessions going for a song, and get emotionally worked up.
One thing my mother-in-law has always loved is decorating for Christmas. When I first met her in 2002, she was still putting up three or four fully decorated trees along with lots of other Christmas decorations (her Santa collection is impressive). She made a lot of her decorations, and really enjoyed getting everything set up just so. Even as recently as five years ago, she put up two trees. In this last house, she only had room for one and of course now she'll need to display a couple of small items since there's no room for a tree.
Kent was in Tulsa as the estate sale people were organizing everything into categories, and he told me they’d put all the Christmas items into one room. He said it was pretty cool to see all those things together, so I asked him to take a photo. Here it is:
The estate sale industry is pretty weird, at least to me. Getting the sale scheduled was a chore. I don’t know if that’s because the people who do this have other jobs or if that’s just the norm for this line of work, but everything was hard to pin down.
As a side note, the woman we bought our house from used an estate sale company before she moved out. Her parents had lived here for over 30 years, and she’d lived here with them through their illnesses and eventual death, and this place was packed with stuff (including a casket in the basement—isn’t that strange?).
They do a lot of the work, though. They sort and label everything, publicize the sale, and provide staff to work at the sale. Afterwards, they box and donate everything that’s left. In the case of the company we used, they prefer that the family not hang around during the sale. That sort of bothered Kent (what are they hiding?) but it also made sense. I can well believe that people get a little weird watching their possessions or their parents’ possessions going for a song, and get emotionally worked up.
One thing my mother-in-law has always loved is decorating for Christmas. When I first met her in 2002, she was still putting up three or four fully decorated trees along with lots of other Christmas decorations (her Santa collection is impressive). She made a lot of her decorations, and really enjoyed getting everything set up just so. Even as recently as five years ago, she put up two trees. In this last house, she only had room for one and of course now she'll need to display a couple of small items since there's no room for a tree.
Kent was in Tulsa as the estate sale people were organizing everything into categories, and he told me they’d put all the Christmas items into one room. He said it was pretty cool to see all those things together, so I asked him to take a photo. Here it is:
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