George Carlin had a comedy routine about "Stuff," it was funny because we can all relate.
That's all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That's all your house is- a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you're saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff! Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore"
But sometimes the stuff wins and takes over our lives. That is an excellent time to call us. Recently we worked for a client who was consumed by stuff, at some point, it completely took over. In every room the stuff was packed in boxes from floor to ceiling, every room, the basement, the garage the outbuildings, even a trailer in the drive way. Packed floor to ceiling with stuff. There were only pathways from room to room to navigate between the soaring walls of stuff.
The time had come, her health demanded she move to an assisted community, now the house had to transform from a warehouse back into a house that could be sold. To do this, and to do it with sensitivity to the emotional connection to that stuff, we created a plan with the client. She didn't want to see anything thrown away, she knew much needed to be, but didn't want to see it. So we brought a crew in to sort through the boxes in part of the house, sorted the treasures from that to be removed. She had given us a list of things she wanted to find, and every three days she would come in see what we found. She and her grown kids would come through and pick out what each wanted to take with them. Then we would bring in the crew to do another area of the house and repeat the process five times. Each time a dumpster was loaded and removed before she had to see it, each time she and her kids would pick treasures found.
After the house was sorted and organized, we ran a two day estate sale to try to recoup the expenses of this massive sort, organize and clean out. The sale was a huge success, generating over 14,000.00 in proceeds. At the end there was still a good deal of items left, all items of some value, but just didn't sell in the two day onsite sale. That is when we tried a different attack, and put the remaining items on an Online Auction generating another 5,000.00. At the end, we cleaned out the few things left, swept out the house, and had it ready for the REALTOR to get it on the market.
The transformation was truly amazing. It is hard to imagine the weight that stuff had pushed down on the shoulders of that family for so many years. A feeling of overwhelmed hopelessness was gone and she and her family no longer buried by the stuff. It is things like this that makes our team love what they do so.