A lot has changed in our society since I started working as a professional organizer almost 15 years ago. I’ve seen a massive shift in how we work, how we shop, what is in style, and what is in demand. One of the most dramatic shifts is the increase in the value of houses compared to the decrease in value of the things we keep in our homes.

As a Senior Move Specialist, I know first hand how disappointing it is for folks to learn the things they accumulated and cared for over the years have a negative value. By negative value, I mean that it will COST a client more to move/dispose of their things than what they can sell them for. It’s a hard pill to swallow to find out that there is no market for many of the things we’ve saved. It’s especially hard to receive that news when dealing with grief or other life challenges. There are steps we can take now to avoid future disappointments and also to preserve value, for ourselves and our heirs. 

Understand the Selling Process

The biggest barrier to getting top value for the things we own is the time and labor involved. It may take hours and hours of work to sell one thing! Last year, I tried to help sell a set of Fiestaware for a client. After making at least 15 calls and sending numerous emails. I finally found an estate sale company to take the set and they managed to sell a few pieces for a few dollars. Now multiply that effort by the number of things in the average home and it’s easy to see why families simply give up and start throwing things in a dumpster. 

On a much larger scale, I was working with the most lovely client a few years back. She was adorable, funny, and also a compulsive shopper. Her shopping habits had filled the home to the point it was hard to walk from room to room. Many things had never been unboxed. When she passed unexpectedly, her kids had to sell her home ‘as-is’ to a broker for a much reduced value. The demands of their own lives meant they didn’t have the 150+  hours of labor that would be needed to research and sell the contents of their mother’s home AND repair the damage to the home that the piles of stuff had hidden. If you had asked my client if her things had value she would have definitely said yes. She was correct that her belongings had value, but that value was a fraction of the costs her adult children would have to bear.

Understand the Market

In my work, I get a lot of great guidance from the auction and estate sale experts I work with. Recently, I consulted one of my experts about a Roseville vase that a client believes is worth a “lot of money”. My expert showed me the sale value for a similar vase that sold in 2015 for $140 and he made the comment “Of course, that value was pre-Covid”. He declined the vase because the market value wouldn’t cover the shipping costs to a buyer.

The pandemic seemed to have accelerated many social trends and one of the trends was downsizing. The collectible market has been flooded these past years with items from attics and basements from across the country. Collectors who frequented estate sales 10 years ago are now downsizing themselves, and younger generations prefer thrift stores or IKEA, where they can buy things for much less.

The good news is that understanding the current market means that we can be pleasantly surprised. That same auction expert happily took a ‘vintage’ Apple computer and he expects it will net my client $300 - $500. 

Start Early

If you do have antiques, collectibles, or other treasures then I suggest you start market research now even if you don’t plan to sell or move in the immediate future. There is a lot of learning gained during the process of determining value and collecting the documentation required to sell items. 

This is a recommendation that I made for a mom struggling with her adult son’s pokemon cards collection that he was still keeping in HER house. Yes, generational clutter works both ways! I suggested that she work with him to research how collector cards are valued and graded and to take his 10 most valuable ones and go through the process of getting them authenticated. If he’s right, he now has a much better understanding of what he needs to do to protect the value of his collection. The insight they gain from the process might mean a reduction in his collection or, at least, a collection that is properly cared for.

Take the Hit Now

Sometimes, we do find that the things we’ve collected have little value or will actually cost us to dispose of them. Saving these things will only increase our costs. From my accounting days, I often think of the lesson of Sunk Cost. Basically, what we have spent in the past cannot be recovered and is not a reason to continue keeping something. Even if we did pay a lot of money for an item, our focus should be on today’s value. If keeping these items prevents us from enjoying and caring for our home, it’s far better to let those things go now. 

The financial hit of disposal hurts a lot more when we need to empty a house quickly, so I encourage clients with more limited budgets to spread these disposal costs out over time and to take advantage of free disposal resources. By doing this, we spare our children and grandchildren the burden of these costs and efforts in case of unexpected circumstances.

The Real Value to Share

Give your heirs a gift by handling the valuation process for them. Catalog the items that have value and do the legwork to find experts that can help with appraisals and authentication. Save and share those resources along with purchase documentation so that your family can easily find and act upon this information in the future.  

Consider completing the selling process so that your adult children will not have to navigate this difficult process while grieving. As I mentioned above, finding value and the right market for our things is incredibly time and energy consuming. The market is also constantly shifting. From my Fiestaware example, I remember when it was considered one of the hottest of the collectibles!

Identify things that don’t have a high dollar value or a negative value and begin moving them out of the home through donations, disposal, or recycling.

The process to declutter feels much more overwhelming to begin than it actually is. I know I’ve talked about the disappointment a client can feel when their items don’t have a high value in today’s market. But there are reasons to celebrate! I had a client get about $4000 from one of my resources from old jewelry that she didn’t wear. Beyond the dollars, I often see my clients gain an appreciation for the space they clear and feel relief once the volume of stuff is reduced. This past spring, I was helping a client downsize and stage her home to sell and she shared two revelations with me. The first was that she now realized much work was involved and she was grateful that she wasn’t passing that work to her only daughter. The second revelation was that she loved the way her rooms looked after we decluttered and staged and she told me “Wow, I should have done this a long time ago.”