Your Kids Don't Want Your Stuff

The Kids Don’t Want Your Stuff

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but your kids don’t want your stuff.

I have seen it a million times.   I’m at the age where a lot of my clients are downsizing. When meeting with a home seller, usually during our first or second discussion, my clients ask me how to prepare their home for the sale. Many times I suggest removing some furniture and getting rid of the clutter. When I suggest this I get the old, “I’ll give that to my daughter,” response. “She always need good furniture,” they say. 

Psst, I hate to break it to you but your daughter does not want the Ethan Allen hutch!

Most kids are not as sentimental as we think.  Most kids are not as practical as we would like.  Yes, they could use the hutch, yes, they could use the dresser, yes, they could use the lazy boy, but it just doesn’t fit the style of their house.  And as much as we would like them to have grandma’s china or the chandelier that’s been in the family for generations, the kids just don’t want it.  They would rather have new and trendy instead of practical and solid.

The good news is that there is a market for your stuff and somebody, somewhere will buy it.  Keep in mind that the goal is to get rid of it, not necessarily to make money off of it.  There are numerous ways to sell these items whether it is on Facebook Marketplace, eBay, consignment shops or auction dealers.  But this takes work on your part. 

If you just don’t want to mess with selling your stuff, there are the three options I usually give to home sellers.  Donate it, trash it or keep it.  Donating is a furniture bank phone call away and many organizations will pick up donated furniture items directly from your home.  You can also just set it out at the curb with a Facebook post of  “freebie alert” and someone will likely pick it up.  A call to 1-800-Got Junk, bulk pick up through your garbage service, or a dumpster are easy ways to trash any items that you can’t donate.  If you decide you just can’t part with that Ethan Allen hutch and would like to keep it, you can store it in a pod or a traditional storage unit to help declutter your house for the sale.

The price of furniture, as well as supply chain issues, is encouraging many buyers to offer to buy furniture in the home that they are purchasing. In my mind, this is a win-win.  Traditionally, this was something that rarely happened but I’m starting to see it more and more with recent home sales.  In this case, we cannot include furniture in the purchase contract, (lenders remind me that they don’t mortgage furniture) but we can do a separate bill of sale. As mentioned, many of my sellers are sizing down so they don’t need as much.  Sellers are realizing how much it costs to move furniture and to them it’s just not worth moving the 10-year-old couch across the country.

So if you are thinking about selling your home, start thinking of how to “thin out” the house.  Also, try not to ask that awkward question to your kids about your furniture.  They probably don’t want your stuff!