Hey I'm Lisa. I'm an author, speaker and coach and mom to seven gorgeous kids, and
in today's video I'm gonna share with you why we decided to sell everything we
owned for our move to Southwest Florida. So if you've been following along you
know that I have moved my family of seven kids from Toronto, Canada to sunny
Southwest Florida, and oh my word hasn't been an adventure! And I will put in the
card some videos so you can understand why are we moving as well as the process
what the processes looked like, and been like. We decided to sell practically
everything and only bring with us what would fit in a six by twelve trailer! Let
me tell, you the process in which it took us to get to this decision, it's just...
oh my word, basically we vacillated, like I just kept flip-flopping. And I'll be
super honest with you- it kind of came down to cost. So let me unpack this a
little bit for you. When we first entertained the idea of moving to Florida
I did just a cursory search of what it would cost to move. I got a whole bunch
of quotes and they all came in at around the $10,000 US mark. Believe you me, I
appreciate people and paying them for their time. This is not, for me, about you
know, like, that being an expensive fee or what have you. But I just couldn't... for me
if I was gonna pay ten thousand dollars in US funds, I kind of was like I'd
rather just buy ten thousand dollars worth of furniture on the other end. So
we thought about it long and hard, and where we landed was to just try and sell.
So I started by selling as much as I could on my own on places like Facebook
marketplace and it was pretty successful. But then it was crunch time! We got
closer and closer and closer to our move date, and I just remember being like, "I'm
not gonna have any time!" So what I ended up doing was working with a company
called Max Sold. They're a company that does auctions, and I found it
completely fascinating, like, completely fascinating how they do it. Essentially
they send in a team who catalogues all your stuff, puts the pictures up online
and then in a short period, like, one day basically, people come to your home on
that specific day. All the stuff is already paid for online, and then they
take your stuff away. Like, it was such a simple and profitable procedure
considering how much time I spent! So sure, if I had had more time, like if I
had given myself maybe, I don't know maybe two months to sell off all my
things and to do the whole process of going back and forth and back and forth
with people... that's the part that I found the most time-consuming and onerous with
selling things on Facebook marketplace. I would list something and people wouldn't
show up, or I would list something and then people would try to haggle even on
things as little as five dollars, and then of course your time is involved
there, right? So if I was billing myself out at ten dollars an hour for example
for all the time I was spending selling my used goods, it was starting to add up to
a lot. And so that is why I decided to try my hand at this online auction. It
was a really fascinating process, and at the end of the day we made about I think
thirty five hundred dollars selling all of our used items. A couple tips if you
want to go down this road of using an online auction like Max Sold:
Honestly, I just... it was an efficient way to sell my stuff in a short amount of
time. So I really I really liked that part of the process, and if you're
interested in what it's like to have an auction check out the link below. So one
thing that's important to note when you do an auction through a company like Max Sold
you don't control it. Like there's, you know, it's a bit of a gamble. So for example
there was some pretty good deals that got (hahaha) that got, you know, sold. Like I
had a fairly high-end bassinet that I think at the end only went for, you know
twenty dollars. I think one of my sofas ended up only going for a hundred
dollars, and it was a higher-end piece. So you really do have to relent of a
little bit of control in that way, but on the flip side, I had some items that I
thought absolutely nobody was going to purchase and they went for so much more
than I ever thought anyone would bid (haha) bid for. It was an interesting experience in
that way where we actually, like I said, I netted out thirty five hundred dollars
approximately from my auction which to me was, you know, far greater than you
know, just donating everything, obviously, or giving it away. It was really helpful
for my bottom line to be able to make thirty five hundred dollars by selling
all my stuff in such a short amount of time. If I were to do all of that again
I'll be honest I probably would have given myself a little bit more time and
tried to sell some of the higher ticket items on my own because that worked
really successfully. My beautiful blue sofas (that I have done a video about
here on my channel), those sold for a really, I think, reasonable amount of money for
used sofas. I had some beautiful pieces, like some BEAUTIFUL wood pieces in my
foyer and in my living room that also went for what I think are reasonable
prices for used items. But it really boiled down to time, and I simply just
ran out of time at the end of the whole process. So some of the pros of selling
everything, practically everything, was that you really get rid of a lot of
stuff and realize the things that you need and you don't need or the things
that you think you need you don't really need. It forced me to like be, very, you
know, like to let go of material items and to really examine my relationship
with material goods. You know I remember when particularly my blue sofas when
they left my home I remember being like, "Oh my gosh, my sofas!" But then not feeling
really that much more emotion after that. You know I think it's healthy to develop
a little bit of a healthy detachment from, you know, physical items, material
goods, so that was a really interesting observation. And to be honest, it feels
kind of nice to start fresh down here in Florida. I knew that some of my furniture
just was not gonna fit by size and I I really just wanted to design the rooms
from scratch. If you've been following me for a while you know that I have, you
know a ten year plus career in interior design, and so this is really fun for me.
It's really fun for me to create spaces for my family and if you come back real
soon to the channel I will share with you my main floor reveal that I'm just
SOOO excited about. But on the flip side, completely, the cons of selling
everything means that you have nothing when you get down there. So in an ideal
world I would have furnished parts of the home either immediately upon arrival
or before we got there. I had one version of this whole adventure where me and a
girlfriend would come in and just spend a week going shopping and setting up
furniture and really having the home set up to be functional before my family got
there. Well, things just didn't work out that way! And so we arrived to Florida
with no mattresses, we had no furniture, no sofas, no dining-room table... like,
nowhere, really, to sit. And we lived that way for about... I don't know maybe two
weeks, where we were slowly bringing in pieces. But I just found so many things
overwhelming emotionally, physically... it was just a little bit tricky, too as soon
as we got there with seven children, limited childcare, you know, limited
energy ourselves (hahaha) to figure out how to furnish a home.
That's one big piece: you definitely need to have a plan for when you arrive. The
other thing that was a little bit difficult about the last couple of weeks
was that I was very mindful to not make decisions based on scarcity. So I was... you
know, I could feel myself getting very pressured and feeling very stressed and
wanting to just hurry up and do it all. But I also wanted to pick items that I
knew I was gonna, like, that we're gonna stand the test of time that were, you
know, not just gonna be rash purchases. And I found that really difficult as
well. I found myself just sometimes being like, "Oh, we should just buy that." But then
being like, "Do I really even like this?" So if you do put yourself in a situation
where you're feeling pressured to buy things you might just want to be careful
that you're not just buying things for the sake of buying things. In the end
everything worked out and I'm really excited to show you how we furnished our
main floor on a budget, how we got super resourceful and so do come back for that
reveal on this channel super soon. So really what it came down to for me was a
decision of value. I was either gonna spend ten thousand dollars and bring all
my stuff down with me or I was gonna spend whatever I wanted to spend and buy
new things, or new-to-me things down here in Florida. And in the end I just sort of
felt better about going the latter route and renting a trailer. And here's the
thing- I really just believe when you discern something, when you take it to
prayer, when you weigh the pros and cons, you have to just make a decision and
then move forward. You can second-guess yourself all you want, like, literally! But
that doesn't really serve you. You can weigh all the pros and cons forever and
not take any action, but that doesn't really serve you! You really have to just
PICK, and start moving in that direction, and ultimately I'm really glad that we
went this route because it allowed us to create a main floor living space that
I'm truly really happy with. So if you were thinking of doing a large move with
your family or if you were just simply curious as to why and how we got our
family of seven kids down to sunny Southwest Florida, I've made for
you a playlist in the cards and I will see you on the other side.