My sister has a thing about going into “dead people’s houses.” That’s what she calls estate sales. But the truth is, the person for whom the estate sale company is selling their goods isn’t always dead. In the world of reselling we know that estate sales are due to one of the three D’s—death, divorce, downsizing. Whichever one is the reason, it’s how most of us get our stock. 

Way before I became a reseller, when I was a new wife and mother and thrifting was a way to save money, I stumbled across my very first estate sale. It was in my mother’s neighborhood. I saw the sign, saw the cars lined up in front of the house, and saw some things in the garage that looked interesting. 

As I walked inside the house, it was as if I was walking back in time. It was the 70s and the familiar avocado green appliances and gold shag carpet spiraled me back to my teen years. It was a living museum of someone’s life. And, yes, it was a dead person’s house. But, that thought never occurred to me. In my innocence, I felt as if the person who lived here had just stepped out to get the mail or run to the store. Everything was as they left it. The pillow in the recliner was askew. There were magazines on the coffee table, the kitchen pantry bulged with spices, bags of flour and sugar, cereal boxes, and zip-loc bags. 

It wasn’t until I came to the bedroom that it hit me. The closet doors were open and on the floor were his shoes lined up in a neat row. His sneakers, his slippers, his wingtips. Above, his shirts hung next to sweaters next to pants. His bed was made. On the nightside table was a watch and a book with a bookmark holding his page, waiting for him to continue reading. No sign of a woman’s things. She went first, I thought. And, he didn’t change a thing. 

Since then I have been to tons of estate sales. And, yes, most of them are dead people’s houses. And, yes, as I stalk around looking at their stuff, examining their things with calculations running through my head, I am touched by their lives. Their homes and how they decorated them, what they chose to collect, what they put in locked china cabinets and what they left out on tables speaks to how they lived, who they were, what they held dear. I like to believe that I’m honoring their things by redistributing them to other people who will love them, too. That these cherished possessions deserve better than ending up in a landfill. 

For those estate sales due to divorce, I picture a new beginning for the person selling out and purging themselves of the things they no longer want—things that once held happy memories but are now too painful to look at. For the downsizers, I see it as their chance to lighten their load and loosen the chains of the past as they lift off and fly into a less complicated way of being. 

And, I think about what my estate sale would look like. What would someone take away about my life from looking at my things?