I had a very different and interesting project recently.  I was hired to assist a woman that had four weeks to sell her home.  This would have been a very stressful time for anyone, but it was especially an issue for her because she had massive amounts of items that had accumulated over time.

The decision had been made to sell many of her possessions in an estate sale for the following reasons:

• She needed money.
• She would need to downsize significantly so she could move into a smaller apartment.
• The house needed to be cleared out so that potential buyers could see the beauty of the home and not just the clutter.
• With excess clutter buyers may question how well a home has been taken care of over the years.  A definite deal breaker for many people.

How Estate Sales Work

Typically estate sales are done when someone passes away.  But either way the process is pretty straight forward.  The estate sale company asks you to remove all the items that you would like to keep. They then organize and sell off everything that is left. And I do mean EVERYTHING!  They ask you to leave things that you believe are not valuable and they will make the decision.

It was an exhilarating project for many reasons.  For one the process was the reverse of what I normally do.  Usually I am working with clients and we identify what will “go” and I take it with me to a local charity or we try and sell it on consignment or through Craig’s List.  Or many times things are just recycled or thrown in the trash.  In this case, we were doing the reverse and pulling out the valuables (both from a monetary and memory perspective) and leaving behind the rest.

Project Challenges

Another aspect that made this project a challenge was that my client was unbelievably stressed (as anyone would be).  But because of this she was suffering from temporary or possibly just a more pronounced form of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).  She could not stay on track to complete activities without someone guiding her.  If left alone she would just leave the home and go for a walk to avoid the situation.  So no progress was being made and none of her friends felt they had the right skills to move her along.

So I was hired by her friends to assist her with preparing for the estate sale.  On top of all the other challenges we also only had one day to get the job done before the estate sale people would arrive!

How We Did It

One of the wonderful things about the project is that she had around 15 friends who volunteered to help her that day.

My responsibilities therefore included:

• Keeping my client focused and on task making quick decisions regarding her belongings.
• Keeping others from distracting my client since this was easily done.
• Directing the volunteers so we could be sure to leverage their time to the fullest.

I had one crew of people who were responsible for doing a “pre-sort”.  This involved going through the piles and logically grouping items so it would be faster and easier for my client to make decisions.  Since she was the only one that could make the final decision on the belongings it was important that her time was optimized.  All the volunteers did an outstanding job!

As one of the volunteers said each room looked like a retail store with items on display.  I’m disappointed I didn’t get pictures of the process because they excelled.  It was such a frenzy all day as you can imagine.  We barely took time to eat.  Here is an example of how items can be logically grouped.

The other volunteers I was responsible for were busy packing up and moving the “keep” items to get them out of the way so they would not be accidentally sold by the estate sale group.

In addition there was another team lead by her decorator friend that was responsible for removing furniture and accessories that would be used for staging the home after the Estate Sale was complete.  This crew even included her Real Estate Agent.   Now that’s great customer service!

It was an exhausting day for all.  But my client did outstanding given her emotional state.  She was decisive and focused and so darn sweet.  She would apologize any time she started to ramble, because she knew I was going to refocus her back to the task at hand.

We worked for 10 hours that day and were able to “process” a large part of her belongings thanks to all her wonderful friends who volunteered their time and money to get the job done.

I felt rewarded with a job well done, but was even more excited when I received this email from the decorator friend that had hired me:

“It was so wonderful to watch you in action with (the client). You are truly gifted and (the Realtor) and I both agree that you were the PERFECT person to work with her.”