be careful shaw. You never know when Da’ Wife will conduct a hostile takeover. 
We meet with a realtor next week to discuss what our selling price will be. She thinks that there will be a buyers market for 1-1.5 years. One year ago we had a 3 month supply to sell and now have a 3 week surplus. Said the only truly dead month is August and it is not good to put the house on the market then.
notrichenough, she said this is the month most desirable to list. Congratulations!
I am slowly tossing things but have decided that we cannot be prepared to move super soon.
BunsenBurner, and that is one of our problems–we don’t know where we even want to live.
@notrichenough , my thoughts are with you. I retained most of my books in our last move, but I think they won’t survive the next move (if that ever happens). Most new purchases are on Kindle, but it’s not the same.
Having moved in a year ago, we are doing major renovations on our house this Spring, and I’m packing up the kids’ and guest bedrooms and moving the boxes to the garage. We are redoing 80% of the ground floor (moving walls, creating open spaces, all new fixtures/lighting, etc.), putting in geothermal, new hot water heater, new well tank, upgrading solar and installing a battery, and other miscellaneous items.
@oregon101, that is our dilemma, too! We live in a very high property tax suburb of NYC in a 6 bedroom house that is way too big for the two of us. All three of our kids (and our grandson) live in NYC and I doubt seriously that any will ever leave the tri-state area. The house needs work and it’s killing me to put money into something when we won’t stay to enjoy it, but some things need to be done to preserve its value. And that value is substantially less than it was 10 years ago, given the market issues during that time, though it is still one of the most desirable public school districts in the country.
My H retired involuntarily last spring (sold a family business out of necessity) and is casting around for what he wants to do now. He’s not ready to be retired but has spent his entire career in a pretty niche segment of real estate that he really has no interest in pursuing. I’d like to rent in NYC and buy a vacation home where the kids would gather, but he’s not sold on NYC and the resident taxes such a move would entail, but I’m still working on him.
And like @notrichenough, I can’t bear the thought of going through this house and getting it ready to sell. I know it’s the smart thing to do, but I’ve yet to muster the motivation to get started. Where do I begin?
@IxnayBob - post renovation sounds like a perfect time to purge and or pawn stuff off on your kids. Only put back into the rooms what you truly want. Get rid of the rest. Just my unsolicited advice! 
Holy cow @IxnayBob, that is a major project. Good luck!
@runnersmom While I tend to have some pack rat tendencies, DW doesn’t, so we actually didn’t have a tremendous amount to clear out. Anything useful got donated to Savers (a local thrift shop run by some non-profit) or recycled/tossed, for anything kid-related they were given the option to keep it or out it went (about 12 boxes of kid’s school papers and projects from K-6 that were sitting up in the attic got recycled). We went through our closets and pruned out 20-30 items of clothing each without even trying hard. All the furniture we are not taking is getting donated to either Restore or a local furniture bank, I can’t be bothered to try to sell most of it.
Almost all books got donated. That stung, but really I haven’t read an actual paper book in ages since I have the kindle, and I realistically wasn’t ever going to go back through my collection and re-read everything, so I let them go.They take up a lot of space.
We started with bedroom closets and were fairly merciless. For the basement and garage we got a Green Bag which holds 3 cubic yards and filled it with scraps of wood and junk that you can’t get rid of in the garbage.
The single biggest chore was dealing with the 60+ full or partially full cans of paint that were in the basement. Almost all was latex, the hazardous waste people won’t take it, and you can’t throw it out while liquid. So I had to open each can, mix in a chemical or cat litter to solidify it, and then toss it. Many were so old the cans rusted shut.
One thing we are still dealing with is artwork. We won’t have the wall space to display everything we currently have, so what do we do with it? Some of it was pretty expensive.
We, too, would not be considered packrats, but we have 35 years of accumulated stuff, including being the local self-storage facility for our kids who live in typical NYC-sized apartments. As i sit typing this in our living room, the two floor-to-ceiling packed bookcases loom frighteningly in front of me (and there are more in the den!). I could donate, sell, trash most of the furniture without looking back since my style and taste have changed dramatically since we moved here, but before any of this begins we have to figure out where we’re going in the more global sense. I know us, years will go by before we make a move unless we just do it.
Just like @runnersmom, most of this is stuff that the kids can’t fit into their apartments (think tiny 5 floor NYC walkup). My diabolical plan is to pack the boxes carefully, label them accurately, and put them in the workspace in the detached garage. At some point, whatever isn’t brought back into the house gets chucked, but since I’m unlikely to become a woodworker (I kind of like my thumbs and fingers), the boxes will be in space I don’t really need.
Not to say that my wife and I don’t have junk, but that’s mostly in the office and will be cleaned out next year.
Books. In addition to several bookcases at home, I have two more full bookcases at my office. As I go nomadic, I’m also planning a downsize of the consulting firm office. No consultants come in and they live in various parts of the country/world. We are down to 2 admin staff from 3. So, I’ve tasked the office manager with giving me four options: 1) stay where we are; 2) another local space; 3) WeWork or equivalent with some dedicated space; and 4) work at home with only temporary space at WeWork or equivalent. It’s pretty clear she’d like option 1, but I’m pretty sure we are overpaying for it and don’t need nearly as nice a space. Option 3 is too expensive as WeWork charges a crazy premium on permanent space. I’d like to see Option 4 – and maybe pay some subsidy for that.
Kids stuff. Yup. We have a cavernous basement with some of their stuff and they still have a room in en the house. Both kids in small spaces.
We are stashing minimal kid stuff for ds, and I am slowly shipping via flat-rate USPS boxes sheet music and photo albums made by ds’s grandmother. Biggest challenge are the oddly-shaped items - sound mixing board, guitar, and accordion! I’m sure ds doesn’t have much space either, but if I could easily get those to him I would. However, living on opposite coasts prohibits that. Ds’s apartment is the exact same size as ours, but he does share it with a roommate.
If he’d let me, I’d cut him a check to replace all of those items at his leisure, but he has not offered that, and I have not asked.
Happy News - We are getting ready for my husband’s retirement party this evening. He’ll retire at the end of the months. I’ll keep working a while (he is 7 years older). Some days I can work from home, so we think this next stage will be nice even if I’m still working. It has been terrific watching him de-stress the past few months while looking forward to the future.
I went through the great purge last year and it took me more than double the time that I’d allotted to do it. Put the house on the market in early Sept which is probably even worse than August as it was the same timing as school start in our area and the Jewish holidays which were the long weekends then when we scheduled Open Houses. There was little interest, not just for our house but any in the area at that price range.
So, we’re here another year. Putting it on the market again next month after a quick spruce up since the heavy duty work has been done. Hopefully, it moves this year. A smaller place and more time at the old family house, our second home is in the plans. DH will start cutting back hours, hopefully and retirement within eyesight now. All the kids gone and on their own except the youngest who is graduating in a couple of months, and has a job and plans no where near us.
Congrats, @colorado_mom.
@cptofthehouse, ShawWife is planting a spring garden to go along with her June garden because she thinks the spring is the best time to put the house on the market. The house we bought 25 years ago was put on the market in September, which was odd for a 5 BR house in short walking distance of an excellent elementary school in a suburb. We were the only real bidder. Everyone who wants to move in to that kind of house wants to do so before school starts.
"Everyone who wants to move in to that kind of house wants to do so before school starts. "
One of the main reasons to live in my town is because of the excellent schools, so we pushed to get the house in the spring market for exactly this reason.
I was at a meeting last week where they said houses my size are very desirable and the for sale inventory is…low.
We are working on the “where to go next” issue.
Cleaning out will take time. Dumpster first. Donations second. Give always in there too. Kids have what they want…or it’s marked already.
We don’t want all this “stuff”.
And the paperback books will all GO.
One thing I have noticed among friends who are a bit older than us. They seem to be moving or buying a house near one of their siblings. My parents generation did not really do that. Are you seeing that?
In my parents generation, there wasn’t any need to move closer to your siblings. Because they already lived close. My parents lived within an hour of their siblings and parents.
People didn’t move and weren’t as mobile. My parents moved south after they retired but most of their friends didn’t. My il’s live 2 blocks from where my fil grew up. They live a quarter of a mile from their other son and family. They never wanted to move away from their home town.
In my small town where I moved to 10 years ago, I am one of the very few of my friends who doesn’t have family around.
My mother lives in NJ. Siblings moved to DC and then Memphis, MA, NJ and NY. They didn’t follow my S to DC and then Memphis though I suggested it. At age 95, she is doing that, but they considered it 15+ years ago.
My friends are moving in early 70s, I guess, maybe late 60s.
You can leave them at the library-related charity, which will put them on a rack for sale for $0.25 each or some such.
If you are in eastern MA you can donate them here:
[More Than Words](https://mtwyouth.org/)
It’s a great program: “More Than Words is a nonprofit social enterprise that empowers youth who are in the foster care system, court involved, homeless, or out of school to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business.”