Wake Up Call & It’s the Wrong Number

I have a real estate listing coming up, a mobile home in a former senior mobile home park in Boise’s East End. To make a long story much shorter, the woman who lived there, Helen, willed it to a non-profit group after her passing. The non-profit organization now needs to liquidate.

The place is a mess, only because it has been vacant for a long period of time. I have not even bothered to find out how long because it really does not matter, does it? Cob webs everywhere. Overgrown ivy to the point that I just found out there are pots underneath. A massive haven for black widow spiders. No, wait, a sanctuary! So many things left behind: closet full of clothes, more pairs of shoes than I even have (yikes, Helen!), wood frames because she was an artist plus many oil paintings on stretched canvas that never were framed, some furniture, as well as home décor and kitchen items that are or were at one time “the bomb”, some other items of no value. Or so I thought.

Since the clean up will take a contractor, there will be costs incurred in cleaning up the place to get it ready to list and market it for sale. The things left behind were not totally junky, so I asked the attorney in charge if I could hold an “estate” sale. What the heck, calling it an estate sale would bring folks! The less we had to haul away the less money it will all cost. You never know, right? Hmm……an estate sale! Great idea!

I sent a local gallery, Art Source Gallery, an email so that the artists there would have a heads up about the wood frames the day before the sale. One delightful artist, Jaki Ashford, came by Friday to look at what was on hand and helped me organize the frames and art work. Thank you, Jaki!! I highly recommend the Art Source Gallery if you are in downtown Boise or downtown for First Thursday. http://artsourcegallery.com/ptf/

I advertised simply on craigslist and Facebook. Put up signs since it backs up to a main arterial in Boise. Drive by traffic is everything here in Boise. Of course, there was one couple as early birds, but they turned out to be antique dealers. I sure learned a lot from them this morning. Then the masses showed up. Before I had a chance to even breathe, most of the stuff was gone. Chawchkey items, gone. Kitchen stuff, gone. Really old beds, gone. Furniture, gone. Junk, gone! The irony is that an elderly couple had to get a trailer to haul most of it away. All I thought was, if they were my parents, I would be scolding them for taking (getting) so much “stuff”. I mean it. Who do they think will have to deal with it when they are gone anyway? (thank you Mama for taking care of that for us before you left…..)

 My wake up call today was to go through my house once a month and purge. I thought I did a good job of that when I downsized last year to a smaller living space. I realized I have a lot further to go in that department!