The Big Move & The Big Sale

This past week seems like a big blur as it was time for Mother to move to her new apartment. This mostly took place towards the end of the week. I started the week off with a haircut - my stylist forgot to color my roots last time so I had four months worth of growth. I kind of go back and forth about letting my color grow out but in the end keep having it colored. I still have the vibrant purple highlights but it is not enough contrast for me with the dark color. If my hair were its current natural color (salt and pepper) I would definitely still add the purple in. This will be my last full hair appointment for the season, so maybe it would be a good time to let it go because it would not look too crazy over the summer and I can go through the most awkward time when I am back in Scottsdale.

On Tuesday I completed my requirements to sell on Whatnot which was to attend an onboarding session to learn how to sell live. Half of the attendees did not have to complete the survey at the end and I was one of the lucky ones. I decided to take a quick peek at Whatnot while I was working in the middle of the night and I came across a man who was selling sterling jewelry. He had a lot of nice pieces including Native American at reasonable prices and was running 30-second auctions on them. He had been online for 9 hours straight! I ended up not bidding this time but I will try and find his live sales again and participate. In most cases, only one person would bid and once in a while there was a second bid. This is great for buyers but not so much for sellers. I would be afraid either my jewelry would not sell or would go too cheaply. But Whatnot may be a possibility for selling estate sale items. Whatnot has an estate sales category and I did come across a live sale in Oklahoma which appeared to be at a true estate house. However the sale was starting at 7:00 Central Time which at 5:00 AZ Time is too early for me. I will keep looking!

We have a by-appointment sale coming up in Mundelein the week after next, this would be a fabulous "regular" sale but the home is in a gated community and after much negotiation, they are allowing us to have a 3-day sale but only 5 cars at the home at one time. It has been two years since we have conducted a by-appointment sale but it all came back to me and I was able to set up the appointment bookings through our website. This home would be a great candidate for a live sale. Unfortunately the perfect person to conduct live sales for us has recently moved away from Chicago.

Mother's U-Box was a day late but we were able to have the movers unload it on Friday. Sadly the furniture was not wrapped in the provided moving blankets on the other end and her beautiful lingerie chest was badly damaged on the top and her scooter was broken in two places. Luckily the scooter still runs but does not look good. We should be able to get replacement parts for the scooter and I do know a furniture refinisher here but they have about a 6-month lead time. Guess I should get on their list now. The beautiful antique dresser is too large for the bedroom and the space is really cramped. In my opinion it is really important to have a nice desk at the window which has a direct view of Camelback Mountain. I lent Mother my mid-century modern desk, I wish it were less deep but we can be on the lookout for another one. The Vail chairs from Denver Modern have worked out great so far, they are so comfortable and look like pieces of art. Things are kind of in flux now as far as what to ultimately keep in the apartment but I knew this was a process Mother needed to go through.

Mother's home went on the market this week and as I expected, things moved very quickly with the real estate process. The first person who toured her home presented an extremely strong offer - she fell in love with the home the moment she walked through the door and I could tell she wanted to do everything possible to secure it, and also to entice us to cancel the weekend's open house. The offer was $15,000 over the asking price but this will be offset by about $6,200 with a request to pay 105% of the outstanding property tax. The buyer plans to put 25% down and if the home does not appraise for enough, she promised to contribute up to $25,000 from her own funds to make up the difference. She waived any requests to have anything fixed due to the results of the home inspection and waived the request to leave the home broom swept. If Mother would like to leave anything behind that will be fine with her! Little does she know that we are in the business and will be conducting a moving sale. The closing is set for June 21.

I posted the ads for Mother's moving sale over the weekend, the sale dates will be June 13-16. I will plan to extend the sale as long as possible. It is not a jam-packed home since Mother kept a lot of items but there is still plenty to see. Mother has great taste and there is absolutely no junk in her home. I also have a plan to present a huge display of jewelry from the caravan with inventory reduction in mind. Mother will also be going through her personal jewelry collection to see what she would like to sell. She has very interesting costume, sterling silver and gold. I have my work cut out for me now as I would really like to have as much new jewelry priced as possible for the sale. I linked the EstateSales.net ad to the above photo. We will probably end up sending a U-Box home with everything we have here that could go in the moving sale. It is expensive but overall worth it, if nothing else for me to get my garage back and be able to devote it to jewelry sales.

Kuochun and I are planning to head for home the evening of Saturday June 8. This is in line with when we left last year. I will be booking tickets before it becomes less than 30 days away in order to hopefully save money. The last couple of trips I was able to use miles for our tickets but I do not have enough miles anymore. I need to figure out if it is worthwhile to use the American Airlines card for purchases and rack up miles or if I receive better cash back rewards from my current cards.

Mother would like me to work her moving sale so the timing of our return works out. We also do not need to have the sale earlier because a cleanout will not be required. We will just leave the home respectfully tidy and check with the realtor to be sure the buyer wants the items once we know what has not sold. I would not put anyone through what the man I bought the Scottsdale home from did to me. There was so much left over it took me over three years to either sell or get rid of it all.

Being at the moving sale will be difficult for me but I am doing it for Mother. Although she has only lived there 6 years, we thought she could live there forever. I never would have guessed that things would change so drastically in such a short time. There are so many items that Mother will need to let go of that are reminders of trips and experiences with Dad. I know this is not easy for her but at least going to an apartment she can keep some of them. The items are beautiful but not my style and I already have two homes with plenty. Rachel is not into knickknacks but has her eye on furniture. Neither of us have kids so we have no one to pass anything to. Overall I am sure it is easier to do this now than later.

Things are heating up on the estate sale front and with helping with the move I was not able to post a new jewelry purge. I did decide to switch gears and started to work on my Buffalo Dancer jewelry collection. The artists of Buffalo Dancer are from Taos Pueblo, New Mexico and are well-known for their coin jewelry. I decided to work on the coin pieces I have remaining from last year. I am a big believer in their charming style and quality of workmanship. While I like the Replica Surfaces backdrop in this group photo, when I shot the individual photos I did not care for their quality. I am a perfectionist so I am going to reshoot the photos using a cowhide backdrop.

This is the first time that I will be able to use this striking pink and brown piece. I like the way it looks with this wood slab. So far I have just reshot the necklace. I think I will post these pieces to Facebook on Wednesday evening.

Short-term priorities will be to keep up with estate sale work and start packing everything to go back to Arlington Heights. I have not been able to take down my entire jewelry display since the garage sale back in February so it would be wonderful to get the car back in the garage again. We have not topped 100 degrees yet but have had a number of days in the mid 90s. I am having my home cleaned next Friday so after that I will be able to get the few remaining possessions of Mother's to the apartment and start moving into the first floor bedroom. So much to do and not enough time!