Sell ALL THE THINGS
How much stuff do you have?
You have two choices when moving stuff: get rid of it or store it. The “get rid of it” option is sneakily two other options combined: sell it or trash it.
Get Rid of It
Sell It
Some things you will obviously sell versus trash. You will sell your car. You will sell your carbon fiber road bike. You will sell your Total Blender. You will sell your recording equipment. You will trash (or recycle) outdated electronics. You will trash (or give away) clothes you haven’t worn in two years. You will trash your wide assortment of papers, business cards, and built up cruft you wanted for a “maybe one day” which never happened.
Some things you will try to sell. You’ll try to sell your computer(s). You’ll try to sell your monitor(s). You’ll try to sell your furniture. You’ll try to sell clothes. You’ll try to sell books.
See the difference? There’s two categories of things you can sell: things that will sell versus things that may sell. If you have a decent car, craigslist will take it off your hands quickly. Same goes for a fancy bike or fancy appliances priced to move. Not quite everything is sellable to our greedy materialistic masses though. People don’t want to buy your two year old computers or monitors unless you’re asking less than 1/3rd what you paid. The cognitive friction between selling your $1000 thing for less than $300 may result in $1000 thing ending up in storage.
It’s worth trying to sell everything you have no deep emotional ties with though. You may be surprised what people want. I had someone buy a five year old miniDV tape HD camcorder because they wanted to convert old tapes and had no reader. I had someone spend over $300 on a digital voice recorder I forgot I had from the 90s (because now people use it for “ghost tracking”).
Trash It
If you can’t sell something, it’s worth offering it on the cragislist free section before visiting your rubbish bin. Be forewarned: people in craigslist free sections are animals. You’ll get a dozen responses within minutes if you’re giving away something people may want. I posted a Dell netbook in the free section and had responses from 50 miles away within seconds begging to let them drive down and pick it up.
Store It
Storage is tricky. Storage places are notoriously packed with fees, special contains, and an assortment of screw-you policies. I ended up using Extra Space Storage because a.) one was close and b.) it let me reserve online. After you rent your unit in person, you’ll find you have to spend an additional $10 per month on mandatory “insurance” which covers basically nothing. You’ll be satisfied after you have your rental unit for under $50/month. That’s a good deal, right? It sure is. It’s almost too good. About three months after you rent your unit, they’ll raise your rate because—really—what are you going to do? Move all your stuff?
Storage TLDR: find storage nearby, clean, and cheap, but don’t be surprised when your rates increase every three to six months.