As important as building the JayBee was to my being able to move into it, the more daunting task was to divest myself of many belongings in order to give up 80% of my living and storage space and live tiny.
No joke: I spent years on this downsizing thing. I learned through the grueling process that it was even harder to accomplish than I originally anticipated. I was determined to find homes for things rather than fill up a landfill with perfectly good items; it worked, but it took me forever! I have read a number of accounts of people who got rid of all of their belongings in a matter of weeks or months, and made thousands of dollars in the process. Not my experience. I think the people who are able to quickly sell their belongings must live in a densely-populated area--where millions of people in close proximity see (and potentially respond to) their ads. When I post ads for things, there are only a few thousand people close enough to be potential respondents. All of this led me to have very low expectations for selling things--and I have given away way more than I have sold. During my last big push to finish divesting myself of stuff (summer/fall 2021), I had a lot of luck with putting free stuff at the end of my driveway and with posting ads on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. I prioritized selling 25 pieces of furniture and appliances; everything else I gave away. I made many donations to Goodwill, and I made good use of a fabric recycling bin a couple of towns over from me. I recycled many boxes full of paper.
Every year, my city has a fall clean-up. For a $25 fee, the city will haul away up to one dump-truck load per household. I participated in this clean-up in both 2015 and 2021. The best part of the whole process is that most of the stuff gets "picked up" by others long before the city's hauler arrives, which means that very little of it ends up in a landfill. In 2016, I put just a few things at the end of the driveway and, within 24 hours, it had all been "recycled" by others and I never had to pay the fee!
I finally had everything moved out of my house one hour before demolition started. Phew! Down to the wire, and what a torturous slog. Now that I'm finally done with that process, I feel so much lighter. Now all of my attention and energy can go into finishing up the build of the JayBee. Nothing I've run into during the construction process has been as daunting as the downsizing process was.
