A friend of mine is moving her mother in law into an assisted living facility. She couldn't do an on site estate sale. They have moved everything to storage and she is sorting through the contents when she has time. She recently asked me what she should do now.

My first and best advice is always the same, if she had called me before she started, I would have told her to contact a liquidate before she made the move.

Now the estate is boxed up and it is extremely difficult to know what is there, and to sell everything that needs liquidation from the storage location.

I advised her to piggy back her estate sale with another estate sale, so that her items can be sorted by a professional. It isn't that my friend couldn't find some treasures, it is that she would spend so much time searching for them and then trying to sell them, in the meantime dealing with moving items over and shipping them. Plus all of the storage fees. In the industry we call this a marriage. We take an estate that has room for additional inventory from someone else's home and we marry the two. It is a win-win because the more there is to sell at the site, the more shoppers we will attract. If one family kept all of the art but another is selling lots of art - that is a wonderful marriage!

Getting a good seller who will spend the time needed to organize and research what is being sold is vital for any estate - married or not.

At my estate sale set up today, I came across a box of ordinary pins, keys, costume jewelry and what looked like mostly junk. But, I always sit down and sort carefully. It is amazing the treasures we uncover.

From this box:

Came this lovely pair of 14k Gold Dolphin Hoop Earrings:

I always get frustrated when I can only find one of the pair of earrings, or when we just find some gold earring backs. But sorting takes time and it always pays off. Even a little gold is better than none!

How Estate Sale Organizing Pays Off