Sherrie Bosse: Building a Life Beyond Possessions

Join my wife Sherrie and I for a discussion of downsizing our possessions in preparation for our move from Vermillion, South Dakota to Akumal Mexico in July of 2021.  

We are incredibly thankful for engagement and stories from our listeners, who have found their own sense of 'home' across the globe. Stay tuned as we continue to share the wisdom and wanderlust of those who've charted their unique international courses. We'd love to hear your comments and questions. Email them to expatslikeus@gmail.com
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Transcript

Liquidating Possessions for an International Move

Speaker 1 0:00

Well, I would just start Look at some things you're not using a lot and get rid of a few things and see how it feels. If you're so attached to stuff that you can't live without it, maybe moving's not right for you, maybe this is not your jam. Maybe you just want to stay with your stuff back wherever you are.

Speaker 2 0:25

Welcome to ExPATs Like Us a co-production with me, vita Margarita, exploring the world of US expat life in Mexico. In each episode, we'll meet new people and hear their stories. We'll also learn more about expat life and get a few tips on everything from making your move to settling in, to living your dreams and, most of all, having fun. Let's dive in. Welcome. I'm your host, bob Bussey. After a 30-plus year career as a media producer and manager, I retired and, along with my wife and dog, we packed up and made a move to Acomal Mexico. Since our move, we've learned a lot about adapting to and living in a new country. I'm here to tell you it's a wonderful life and perhaps help you plan a move or give advice based on our experience. Thanks for joining so today on ExPATs. Like Us, I've got Sherry Bosse with me. Sherry is a retired education professor and US expat who has lived in Mexico for a little over two years. I'm also proud to say she's actually my wife. We moved down here in July of 2021 after taking early retirement from our jobs in South Dakota. We both knew that we wanted to make an international move for a couple of years before we actually made the move, and once we both knew where exactly we wanted to move to, we realized that we needed to trim our belongings down, way down. In fact, we realized that we would only be taking what we could carry on a plane. In our house, sherry was the one to take on the task of getting rid of our things. She's here to share her thoughts on liquidating a lifetime of possessions in advance of an international move. Welcome, sherry, to ExPATs Like Us.

Speaker 1 2:14

Thank you, bob, I'm happy to be here.

Speaker 2 2:16

So give the listeners some idea of the amount of stuff. I mean I know how much stuff we had, but give the listeners some idea of the amount of stuff that we had when we decided to move to Mexico.

Speaker 1 2:28

Right. Well, at the time we moved, we had been married about 30 years and we had accumulated at least 30 years worth of stuff. It all fit into a three bedroom, three and a half bath house with a three-stall garage and some pretty good storage spaces. So it was both what we have accumulated over our lifetimes and careers, but also some things that we inherited, and it was packed in there pretty tight.

Speaker 2 2:52

So tell me what, when you first realized that we had to get rid of all this stuff, what did the task look like to you at the very beginning of that?

Speaker 1 3:02

Well, I think it was pretty overwhelming and I didn't admit that it was as overwhelming as it probably felt. So I just started out looking around for some low hanging fruit things that we could just get away with, that we would never even miss if we got rid of. And that's where I started.

Speaker 2 3:19

So how did you feel about getting rid of a lifetime of stuff?

Speaker 1 3:24

Most of it I felt pretty good because I knew that we were moving on to a beautiful place and a new lifestyle. So I was really looking forward to the end product of being able to move to a beautiful environment and also retire from work, which, although I loved work, retirement sounded pretty good at the time too, so I wasn't depressed about it. I just knew that there was a lot of work to get done.

Speaker 2 4:37

So did you find it kind of overwhelming looking at that? I did, Particularly because, like, I was not helping with this all that much. Don't tell me about that. How did you feel about that? This is also kind of a marriage counseling thing here, maybe, but tell me, you know, I didn't. I didn't, to be honest, I did not take a lot of involvement in getting rid of our stuff. I just said get rid of it. My focus was on making the move and figuring out all of the other things involved with the move. But you know it was all about you doing it.

Speaker 1 5:09

Well, and that was probably for the best, because you're not very attached to any stuff. So I think if it was up to you, you would have like tossed it all out in the front lawn and we would have been done.

Speaker 2 5:20

That's probably true. My motorcycle. I would not have tossed my motorcycle out on the lawn, but there's a lot of stuff that you're probably right. I would have done that because I'm just not a person that's attached to stuff, so so a move like this was probably easier for me than it is for a lot of people.

Speaker 1 5:36

I think so. Yeah, you know, and I probably the hardest thing for me were, like heirlooms that have been passed down from family that I knew valued those things, and so I just wanted to make sure that I found a home for those things, that someone would appreciate them, and we didn't really have family members that we could pass them on to. So I use some places like eBay where I could find collectors that might care about military emblems or souvenirs or old coins or even very old postcards. At least I felt it was better than going to like a thrift shop or maybe in a dumpster.

Speaker 2 6:14

Right. What are some of the things you needed to think about when we decided to make the international move?

Speaker 1 6:19

Well, I started looking at the times of year that things would be appealing to other people, so I actually set up a list of each month and things that I thought would be marketable during those months. So around holidays I started paring down holiday items. I looked at things that we actually used on a daily basis and knew that would be at the end. But I went through a lot of our maybe homeware stuff that we didn't use very often and started thinking about where would I be able to maybe get some money out of it. So I looked at three really big options. One was eBay, and that was great for those collector type of pieces or small mailable types of pieces. I also looked at the online marketplace. So certain times a year I knew that people were looking for camping equipment or lawn furniture and if we had some that we weren't using, I put it out there, made sure it was nice and clean, took good pictures of it and a lot of times it went within a couple of hours. It was also kind of funny. I noticed a lot of the things went to people I actually knew that were in the community and so the minute I posted something I would get a personal message from one of them and they would take it and then this was all on social media. Yeah, on a social online like Facebook, marketplace is basically what I used. And then the other big place I used to sell things was at a consignment shop in our area, so they would take consignments and when they sold them I got a portion of the proceeds and that didn't turn out to be very lucrative, but if I didn't have a place for something, it was possible that I'd get some money out of it. And then, last but not least, I donated a lot of things, and things like books. As a former educator, I had a lot of books.

Speaker 2 8:12

I remember this.

Speaker 1 8:14

And so if I found someone that I thought would be able to use the books, I would donate it to that person, or again, the consignment shop was a good place to put them, and we had a ton of music CDs that was more you than me. But instead of tossing them in the garbage, I took them to the consignment shop and some of them actually sold and I felt like they had a second life.

Speaker 2 8:38

Right, I remember I actually used an online. There's a CD retailer. I'll have to look that up and I'll include that on the links on our Facebook page at expats like us and I'll figure out who that was. But yeah, I sold a bunch of DVDs or CDs that way and you'd be surprised, some CDs we had were a little bit rare because they went for probably more than they went for when I bought them originally. So, yeah, I kind of forgot all about that. So we were fortunate that we had like two years probably, and it probably took all of those two years, didn't it?

Speaker 1 9:17

Yes, and we could have probably sped it up, but that two years was a nice luxury to have, because that way we could make very purposeful decisions about when we were getting rid of things and what. And, like I said, I made a list and a notebook and I labeled it by the month, and so there were certain months that things would sell and certain things that I thought we're not going to want to be able to let go until the end, but I wanted to make sure that I listed them in time to sell them or find a home for them.

Speaker 2 9:49

And we really didn't end up throwing that much stuff away. I mean, hardly anything that we threw away probably should have been thrown away well before that.

Speaker 1 9:59

Yeah, Well, right towards the end there were some things that didn't sell and I just put a little notice out on Facebook and said free. And at the very, very end, I think the day we're moving out of our house, I had some lady come and pick up a ton of plant pots and garden decor that nobody wanted. She sure did, so it all found a home.

Speaker 2 10:24

It's amazing what people will pay money for or want, especially if they get a deal right Exactly, and I think in honesty about everything that we sold was a pretty good deal for the people that bought it. We knew we wanted to get rid of it. Getting rid of it was probably more important to us than getting a large amount of money for any of that stuff.

Speaker 1 10:50

Well, interestingly enough, one of the things that I did right at the very beginning, the first time we sold anything, is I started a Google spreadsheet and I kept tracked up everything we sold. So every item that sold on Facebook Marketplace, every check I got from the consignment shop. We even did a sale at our house, kind of a yard sale towards the end. I kept track of that, and that was one of the fun things for me is to see how much we were actually getting on of our items.

Speaker 2 11:21

Right, yeah, I remember that Because you'd say, well, guess how much we're up to with getting rid of our stuff, and you would tell me, and it would blow my mind, how much stuff, how much money, we're up to.

Speaker 1 11:33

Yeah, I just look back to see what it was. So before we sold our vehicles, which were kind of our big ticket items, we had made $20,000 off eBay and Facebook Marketplace and our consignment and sales. So that was a nice chunk of change to start a retirement with.

Speaker 2 11:55

So yeah, and I remember, and there's some things that you think are really worth money and you don't get anything for them. I mean, in fact, I ended up giving away a 55-inch television Because nobody had expressed any interest in it. We had a week before we had to be out of that house and it was like, hey, maybe the buyer would love to have this TV.

Speaker 1 12:19

Yeah, and plus it was someone you knew, so that was a nice thing to do is to give it away.

Speaker 2 12:24

It was. Yeah, that's true. So you have to make a lot of big decisions. When you look at all of your stuff, and some things mean more to you, some things Don't mean that much to you, but with almost every item, you have to make a decision of what to do with that. Yes, so how did you go through that process?

Speaker 1 12:44

So one of the things I would do if I were cleaning out a closet, I had three large rubber made tubs and I had them labeled with different selling platforms, and so I would go through and I would take something out, look at it and if I thought it was an eBay item, I would stick it in that tub and I kind of would Speed up the process of going through a closet that way, just by not having to make so many decisions Just like oh, this looks like an eBay, I'll stick it in there. Then, when I had a little more time, I could go back to the eBay tub, take an item out, go on and look at what the prices average for that item would be and then take my photos. So you can't spend a lot of time on those decisions. But I'm a quick decision maker, so that worked out pretty well for me right and you lived with the decisions once you made them.

Selling Items and Organizing Photos

Speaker 2 13:37

To right on. Yes, I will say you know, in in, I kind of miss, I kind of miss. I miss my motorcycle. I loved having a nice motorcycle. I kind of miss my, our vehicles. You know, I mean in Mexico we have one and it's it's a nice vehicle, it's a Nissan X-Trail and it's relatively new, it's two years old and it's a great vehicle. But I miss the ones that we had. You know, I miss my Volkswagen that I had, and and the other and my truck that I had and all that we had a lot of stuff guys, and that's, that's the bottom line. But we knew that we wanted to move. I think that our desire to move outweighed Any attachment we had to our things. Oh, and, by the way, we brought our dog along. You might be that's Dexter in the background.

Speaker 1 14:29

I'm not sure what he's barking at out there, but and that was my most important thing to bring was Dexter, so that that was a a no-brainer. We were bringing Dexter to Mexico. One of the things that took me a long time to deal with were our photos.

Speaker 2 14:45

Right, right. We had a lifetime, not just our photos, your parents photos, my parents photos.

Speaker 1 14:53

We had a time and they weren't terribly organized. I had a few albums, but then I also had a lot of shoeboxes full of photos and that process of scanning them. Now I know there's easier and quicker ways to do it, but I was doing it on the cheap, so I just used the scanner we had and I scanned the photos that we wanted, one by one, and so I would just take a shoebox and start working on it on a weekend. And you know there were some photos at a point I got to him like you know, I really don't care so much about this one, I'm not scanning it and the photos that were kind of old ones, like maybe you know, family heirloom type of photos. I Sent a big box of them to my cousin out on the West Coast because I knew she would appreciate them, and Then I turned the ones from Bob's family over to his sister. So you know they didn't all end up in the garbage, but we scanned the ones that we loved and they're all and organized now nicely into Google Albums and anytime we want to go back and look at them we can.

Speaker 2 15:58

Yeah, we were. We were fortunate. My sister happens to be a world-class scrapbooker, so she wanted every picture she could get her hands on, and I think we gave her more than she knew what to do with.

Speaker 1 16:11

It's her problem now. She's got a closet full of them, that's true. But that was probably one of the most time-consuming things we did and and everything else. You know, it seemed like I did a little bit every weekend towards our goal right.

Speaker 2 16:28

How much time would you say you spent in a in a average week? You know, I know, probably the first year it wasn't that much, it was, you know, and maybe an hour every couple weeks or something like that, I don't know.

Speaker 1 16:40

I was doing a lot of eBay work that even like two years out, yeah, and so sometimes they weren't very big items but like selling coins or military memorabilia, postcards, that type of thing I did actually probably spend or jewelry I had a lot of jewelry. I spent probably a couple three hours every weekend Organizing, taking photos, cleaning the items, you know, making them look nice, posting them on eBay I mean eBay and then, as they sold, I probably, you know, spend another half hour a week packaging them up. And then I made a lot of trips to the post office. So I made good friends with the people that worked there for sure right and I learned I did learn to use eBay's Selling platform inside.

Speaker 2 17:26

Now, with the stuff that I got rid of as well, yeah, um, I so. What would you? So, just to give us an idea, what are all the platforms that you can think of that you use to sell?

Speaker 1 17:39

well, I used Facebook online marketplace and I used eBay and that's about it for online platforms that I used.

Speaker 2 17:51

Okay, all right, I used gun broker because I used to own a bunch of guns and I sold them on gun broker, true, but yeah, I think everything else was probably Facebook marketplace, you know now I know there are some online sites for selling Used clothes or handbags and those are usually more for designer clothes or designer handbags and I didn't really have a lot of those.

Speaker 1 18:19

I did. I did try one for a nice coat that I have and it didn't really sell, so it didn't work for me. But I think if you have a lot of name brand Items like that, that might be a good place to go, because people go on those sites specifically looking for those name brands right.

Speaker 2 18:35

You know, one thing that struck me when we were kind of coming up with this topic for today is not everybody sells all their stuff before they come to Mexico. We know people down here, friends of ours, that brought all of their stuff and To me it's crazy, it's. I mean, it cost, you know, five figures in in US dollars to be able to ship your stuff down here. And you know, once you get here you realize your furniture does not fit the Mexican aesthetic. You know at least where we live. We live in a, in a quintana Rue, in a condo community. It's very ultra modern condos and everything, and none of our furniture would have ever fit in or looked good in this place. It would have looked so out of place.

Speaker 1 19:20

Yeah, we went from a prairie style home on the prairie. Right a modern condo on the beach. So or? Close close to a beach, not on a beach.

Speaker 2 19:28

But, yeah, the the style wouldn't have fit and a lot of times In a humid environment like where we are, I think a lot of our furniture probably wouldn't have held up very well, right, so not made of the right woods, because we're in a Tropical jungle here and none of our furniture was made for something like that and I don't know that in the US you can buy all that me. I suppose in the southern US you can, but Not where we were from, not from South Dakota where we came from.

Speaker 1 19:56

Yeah, and it was all easily, easily replaceable. Here I mean, you can find furniture, you can actually have furniture handmade to your specifications to fit your Ideas or your style or the size of your room.

Speaker 2 20:09

But we're pretty reasonable costs compared to what it would be in the States to have a handmade, custom furniture made right, that's true, some things you know, that's, and we'll talk about that as we go on with these, this podcast series. But some things are much, much less expensive in Mexico and much higher quality, you know, for much less money.

Speaker 1 20:31

And that includes, you know, different kinds of custom-built furniture and things especially and then the other thing We've heard from some of our friends and neighbors down here. Not that they brought it all with them, but they couldn't let it go and so they're paying for a storage unit, or Some family member has a lot of things stored for them and I guess if you're moving down and you're not sure you're gonna like it and there's some things that you just don't want to let go, that's an option. But I would suggest, if you're going to do that, to make a really detailed list of everything you store back home so that you know a year out you can look at that list and say do I really want any of that stuff? Because if you're paying, you know 200 or more a month and I know people that paid way more per month for storage lockers back home. That's a big investment. You could have probably replaced all those things or, you know, giving them to someone or brought them with you, because that really adds up.

Speaker 2 21:31

So there's, people have a compulsion to hold on to things. It's just I think it's human nature to do that and yeah, and.

Speaker 1 21:40

Besides yours, your motorcycle, there's not a ton that we've really missed, that's a bit down here a couple of things we've replaced down here. So I loved my steam mop for my floors back home. I bought one here. So if you really really love it that much, you can probably buy one here, and we have a good Amazon delivery service here, just like you do back in the States.

Speaker 2 22:02

So yes, amazon you can buy. I pretty much everything that you can buy in the US On Amazon you can buy in Amazon Mexico or there's nice stores here that you can go to and find pretty good quality items and right and I kind of miss having a sewing machine, but I really didn't use it all that often, so I haven't found the the reason or the justification to really buy another one. So that says a lot about your personality and the way you are that the thing you miss is a steam mop.

Speaker 1 22:33

I Like my floor is to look nice.

Speaker 2 22:38

Apparently and by golly, they do our floors. You could eat off our floors pretty much all of the time. What was the hardest thing for you to get rid of?

Speaker 1 23:11

I would say, like those heirloom pieces that had been handed down for my parents that I knew they loved and they valued so much, and you know we had them displayed in our house. You know they looked nice. I had a wooden icebox that had been my grandmother's. I had a, you know, silver covered, big, I guess lemonade type of picture from probably Early 1900s that had been handed down in the family. Things like that that were, I thought, were pretty cool and it looked nice in our prairie style home but it just didn't make sense to bring here. So those were, those were hard decisions, just because I felt a little guilty, I think right.

Speaker 2 23:50

So what surprised you about this whole experience?

Speaker 1 23:54

Um, I think probably the thing that surprised me the most is I really don't miss a lot. You know, I I did take pictures of things that I thought were kind of, you know, special mementos, and so we have photos if I really want to look at them, but I really don't miss much. I mean, you know, life isn't about stuff. I think life is about experiences, and that's what we're getting here.

Speaker 2 24:14

Right, I totally agree and that's that's what drew us to make the move in the first place. So, yeah, I I feel exactly the same way, although, like you said at the beginning, I'm not a. I don't attach myself to stuff, so you know, I know that people do. I'm not one of those people. Um, so, from your experience, what are the top few tips that you might offer new Uh expats people looking to make the move and hoping to become expats about preparing for their move in terms of the amount of stuff they have?

Speaker 1 24:49

well, I think Before you move somewhere, you're definitely going to want to visit there a few times, spend some, spend some time there, kind of get a feel for like what your daily life would be like and consider what are you really going to need and then think about is it feasible to bring it with you If it's a big item, or would it be just as easy to replace it once you get here? So I think most of the time it's Replace it once you get here. But if there's something that you really love, you're going to have to figure out how to get it here. Price the shipping, see if it's something you can bring down in your luggage and uh. But yeah, consider what you really need in life. Let's make top tip.

Speaker 2 25:31

Okay. Um, if people are not sure that they're mentally ready to start To part with a lifetime of possessions, what advice could you give to them?

Speaker 1 25:42

Well, I would just start. You know, look at some things you're not using a lot and get rid of a few things and see how it feels If you're so attached to stuff that you can't live without it. You know, maybe moving's not right for you. Maybe you know, maybe this is not your jam, maybe you just want to stay with your stuff back wherever you are. But I would start and you know we didn't do a lot of moving in our married life but Uh, we did move four times and each time we would downsize, we get rid of stuff we don't need and we still ended up with me way more stuff than we did, I mean when we went to clear out our last house I had boxes like remember our box of cables?

Speaker 2 26:23

Yeah, I had stuff like that that we'd had that box since our first house and never dug into that box for anything and it was all kinds of Stereo cables and connectors and stuff like that and we never used them. But they made the move to storage areas in In four different homes right and I think that goes with.

Speaker 1 26:47

The whole thing is did you unpack it from one house to another? No, you didn't. You just left it in storage area. So it's kind of like, don't they say with with your clothes, in your?

Speaker 2 26:54

closet. If you want to thin your closet, real, pay it. You know, somehow Track what you wear and if you haven't worn something in a year, you're never, ever, ever going to wear it and you can let it go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other thing that was kind of fun is I.

Speaker 1 27:09

You know, I always like watching Home improvement shows. But I also watched some organization shows, kind of the whole binge watch during covid or during the winter or whatever, and kind of see some of the techniques that they have for downsizing and organizing. And After watching one of those I'd always feel kind of excited about it and I'd like go tackle a closet. So that's another motivator you want to do as well as they just did on the show you just watched.

Speaker 2 27:38

Okay, well, I think I don't know what else I would have to ask you. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for your insight on this. This is Sherry Bussie. Of course, she's the one who did all of our packing, selling, giving away dough, dating, all of our items before our big move to Mexico, and we've never looked back. And I look at our friends here and They'll all tell you the same thing. They don't miss a thing. You know, and I you know. If you're thinking about making that move and you know that you want to have this experience, just do it and You'll be happy that you did and you will not be as attached to things as you think that you are Right, it's one of those good conversations that Xpats have like.

Speaker 1 28:20

Oh well, I got rid of this. There are the same conversations.

Speaker 2 28:24

You know that's probably a topic for a podcast too, the recurring conversations that you have with fellow expats yeah, that's one of them is People don't miss their stuff and they're proud to not miss their stuff, exactly so. Anyway, thanks for joining me today and uh. I will see you, I suppose, in the living room. Okay, sounds good.

Speaker 1 28:45

Bob, see you there.

Speaker 2 29:21

In each episode of Xpats, like us, we're going to teach you a new Mexican slang word. This is something you may not find in your phrasebook or your online Spanish class or your Spanish app or wherever you're learning your Spanish. Instead, this is a term used primarily by Mexican Spanish speakers. Today's word is Padre. Padre.

Speaker 1 29:46

Now, that means father Father translates to father, but it also slang way used is cool.

Xpats Like Us

Speaker 2 29:53

So que padre se ve. That looks cool. It means so. It means father, but it also means cool, Okay, Padre. Gracias. Erika Kulwalski from Mi Vita Margarita. We'd like to hear your thoughts and comments on today's topic. Just look up Xpats. Like us on facebook or send us an email to xpatslikeusfgmailcom. You can also see videos of interviews and all sorts of fun content on our youtube page. Follow, like, subscribe and leave us a review. Thank you to our guest today, Sherry Bussey. Thanks also to our co-producers from Mi Vita Margarita. Most of all, thank you for tuning in to Xpats Like Us and thank you for interacting with us on social media. Next time we'll bring you more first hand information about your international mood. Until then, remember, our homes are not defined by geography or one particular location, but by memories, events, people and places that span the globe.

Speaker 3 31:26

Take a road trip. Who cares where we are? Miles and miles and miles. You, you, you you.