The adventures of Craigslist:$20 (or best offer)

To prepare for the move I've been selling furniture and electronics on Craigslist for the past two weeks. The original plan was to sell almost all of our furniture and store only a few boxes of items.  Since I have a slight obsession with furniture shopping I was totally on board with the idea of starting over and had even started looking up furniture stores in the UK online.  I quickly realized what little money we would earn from selling our possessions, after converting it, would barely cover a new dining room set at IKEA!  After reconsidering our plan, we decided it would be best to ship a few pieces of furniture to England. Unfortunately, this meant some of our super-sized American furniture, including our beloved California King bed, would be relegated to US storage.

The pieces not selected for team UK or team US storage were listed on Craigslist.  This included our self-built Swedish furniture and a few newer pieces, like our coffee table.  I was hesitant to give up our coffee table. After all, it took me months of scouring stores to locate the perfect round coffee table, plus it was only a year old.  I agreed only after Rory pointed out that the table was "scratched to hell." The damage occurred when the dogs escaped from their day time doggie jail and managed to scratch the entire top of our new wood coffee table. Initially, the damage infuriated both of us but we soon were trying to guess what the dogs were doing to end up on top of the coffee table. I finally settled on a theory that the dogs must have been tap dancing on top of the table.  Every time I noticed the scratches, instead of getting angry I simply visualized tap dancing dogs.

Even though each sale meant there was one less possession to move or store, I couldn't help but feel sad as strangers walked away with pieces of our life in Costa Mesa.  Even our scratched up coffee table sold. While I don't know what our new home in England will look like or where it will be, I do know that our dogs will still be able to tap dance on our next coffee table.  In the end, I think that is what matters most

Lessons from Craigslist:

1. Gamers (Dad: a gamer is someone who spends all waking and sleeping hours playing video games) offer to pay half the listed price and expect you to respond via text immediately to their 40 questions about the unit.  They also expect the console to be under warranty. Apparently, they mistake "Craigslist" for "Target." 
2. If selling a gaming system, expect to receive text messages at 3:00 a.m. when the gamer's console breaks during an incredible game of Halo.  
3. The spammers (all with Russian sounding e-mail addresses, no offense) all reply to your postings at 7:38 a.m. simply by writing "interested."  Against my better judgment I actually responded to the "interested" e-mails and now my spam e-mail overflowith.   
4. If you have any piece of junk that you just need to get rid of, post it under the "free" section and you will have 12 calls in 30 minutes.  
5. Even if selling furniture, expect an e-mail with questionable sexual innuendos.  Apparently "armoire for sale" is a secret code that I do not want to decipher.   

At this point, I've managed to sell almost everything we posted on Craigslist. If anyone is interested in an Armoire, and I mean the furniture, or a Neuton lawnmower let me know!

.