Decluttering Furniture: Selling and Dumping

I don’t have a lot of nice furniture, but sometimes need to deal with it. You can dump it, or sell it. Almost everything can be sold, but the price might not be too high.

Selling

I sold this piece a few months ago. I originally bought it for $10 on Craigslist, and sold it for, I think, $20.

It sold quickly, too. I think it was only a few days of listing it on Craigslist and Facebook. If I were looking for more money, I could raise the price and wait, but I needed to get it out quickly. We were getting some repairs done, and needed to clear out. I wasn’t going to pay a hundred dollars to store furniture.

I had put around $30 of materials into fixing it up. I got new bottom panels for the drawers, reglued all the joints, washed off the crap on the wood, and also treated it with anti-urine-smell stuff because some birds or something pooped on it.

I also did a light refinish with stain, to unify the colors. Lots of little things added up to make it a much nicer piece.

So, even at $20, I lost some, but I did get years of use from it.

It’s not a great antique, but it’s a functional antique. I’d guess it’s from the 1910s to 1930s and from North Carolina. Lightweight and pretty sturdy, it provided good service, and looked pretty nice.

So, if you are getting rid of an antique, even if it’s not in great shape, you can sell it.

Dumping

I put out an ad trying to get these two things taken away from the alley behind my apartment.

The bookcase was thrown out, by us, once before. The neighbors picked it up. Now they are throwing it out.

Originally, we had picked it up off the street, and painted it with the green and pink paint. It doesn’t look like much in this photo, but it was pretty nice, in my opinion.

I’m hoping someone else picks it up. It’s pretty well made. It stands upright without a brace in the back.

The other furniture is also pretty good. I’m not sure what it is, but, again, it’s made of joined wood.

For the right person, with some time, these could be repaired and made usable again.

It’s not like “Ikea” furniture made of particles of wood and glue. (This is a pro-tip: if you need furniture, look at the junk on the curb. Sometimes, it’s well-made and repairable.)

I was deleting photos and found this picture of the bookcase, when we had thrown it out shortly after moving into the apartment.

Update: some people bashed the bookcase around, totally destroying it. Some of the wood pieces were taken away, but over half was left behind, damaged. It eventually got picked up by the city or something.