There are some lovely people out there, and some really inconsiderate **bleep**s.
I've had many rounds of selling my parents vast and eclectic collections of china. One particularly huge set was advertised, and a buyer came forward. She lived near my home, so I said I could bring the china the 200 miles if she definitely wanted it.
She did.
I messaged her the day before I was leaving to say I was going to start packing the china, that it was a lot of stuff, and if she had changed her mind to please let me know before I wrapped it.
She wanted it.
I messaged her the following day to say that I was now packing the car, and this was a chance to say she had changed her mind.
She still wanted it.
I got it home, I unpacked it all, put it all through the dishwasher (which took many loads to do), and then I messaged her about coming to collect it.
She demanded one of my other large sets also be included in the price.
I declined and explained that we were selling to fund my Mum's care.
She said she didn't want it after all.
I said: "no problem", and left it at that. I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of letting her know just how much she had inconvenienced me.
There was a plus side to this. I later sold the china to a lovely local lady, who had come to buy some other china that I had advertised.
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We have had car loads and car loads of clothes to dispose of. Chartity shops, Salvation Army banks, bags for rags. It's left us with mountains of hangers.
The first many boxes just went to the tip, each time we got rid of the clothes that had hung on them.We had too much to do to worry about finding new homes for hangers.
After emptying my parents bedroom, we had two final boxes and I advertised on freebie pages. A chap local to me wanted them, and then someone else also wanted them. I told the second person I had plenty, and said when I'd be bringing them home.
I brought the two boxes of hangers, organised by shape and size, home, foregoing car space that could have been used for something else.
The first person changed the collection date twice , and then finally said he couldn't come.
The second person ghosted me.
The boxes have been occupying a large part of my kitchen floor and I re-offered them on a local Facebook group. . A lady came, but she refused to take a whole box, she just wanted to pick out a few. I asked her if she could please just take the box, and she declined as she would then have to get rid of the excess herself. Zero empathy.
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I've found the charity shops quite draining to deal with.
Recently we took a car load of bric a brac and gave it to a local bric a brac type place because I just couldn't face going in to the charity shops again. It was a much more pleasant experience, the chap was genuinely pleased. We ended up taking loads of stuff to him, and it was a much happier experience.
We did still take stuff to the charity shops as well.
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And sometimes people are lovely. Many people have been over the moon with their purchases, and that makes it worthwhile.
Every time I come back from my parents with crates of stuff to deal with. I spend many days a fortnight cleaning, sorting, photographing, listing, answering queries, packaging, posting. A local lovely lady provides me with some superb empty boxes, small enough on one dimension to go Small Parcel, but big enough and rigid enough to be fantastic.
I've become a dab hand with my glue gun turning these boxes into "double walled" safety boxes, often multi-storey. My husband chuckles and shakes his head when he sees me with Glen the Gluegun. He chuckled even more when he read some of the feedback.
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