Should we sell all our furniture?
 

We're getting ready to move from Maryland to TV and have a question for the more seasoned Villagers: Did you sell all your furniture or did you move/store it? We're thinking of selling most of what we have and having a decorator furnish a new home for us. Don't think our stuff here in Maryland will look good in TV. And storing it would cost a lot if we decided to just sell it on the other end. Just wondering what most of you did. For the first year, we are renting a furnished home to see if we like TV. Any wisdom you can share is greatiy appreciated. Looking to be in TV by September if all goes well with selling our house.

Sell, Sell, Sell.....don't bring any of it with you!

We sold just about everything.
We had an auctioneer haul everything to the auction house and sold everything, including one of our cars. Then we used the money to buy and color coordinate our Village home.
Everything we brought here fit into our intermediate size car.
We are so happy we did it this way and saved on moving expenses and trying to fit in early american furniture into a Florida themed home.

Definitely sell it. It is not worth the cost to ship and you will not get much for it on consignment.

We kept all our furniture. It is colonial, New England maple, cherry and oak. We had dark hickory wood floors installed to replace all the carpet and the white walls give great contrast. We also installed white plantation shutters. The house has the appearance of old Key West from the 1930's. You certainly may choose to get all new furniture and have a professional decorate your house. Our furniture had so many memories attached to it that we chose not to part with any of it. You will notice many homes look alike down here, inside and out, but you can do any style you choose. There is a high degree of conformity in The Villages, but we are a tolerant bunch so you can do whatever you want!

Keep any sentimental pieces and sell everything else. We had a huge estate sale and got rid of everything. They even bought the food out of my cupboards!

I have seen too many houses down here crammed with big, dark furniture which doesn't look right in a bright Florida house! SELL IT!

Another vote for SELL.
The Consignment Stores already have lots of furniture from northern states, and it usually doesn't sell quickly in Florida.

We brought the things we love and sold or donated the iffy stuff. We regret some things we left behind, but more "what we're we thinking" about the things we paid to move and then gave away.

I haven't moved to our home in TV yet but I am interested in the replies you are getting.

I've actually have a list started! (Wishful thinking on my part!!) Right now, I'm planning on bringing a few pieces that I think will fit into our Iris: a beautiful curio cabinet that holds my precious momentoes, an entertainment center and Mom's bedroom suite. I'm thinking about moving these items in a POD. Everything else I will sell at an auction.

My problem is Mom has a lot of sentimental items from Dad that she doesn't want to give up!! And, we both are into genealogy and talk about paper!

My main problem is talking my 90 year old mother and 86 year old aunt into moving to TV! They are both fairly active and like TV -- they just don't want to leave home. Not even all of this white stuff (snow) we have on the ground changes their minds!

SELL......we did not. And if we had to do it all over again we would have sold everything except our master bedroom set as it is very special.

Did I mention SELL!!!!

if you love your stuff, keep it. otherwise, sell it and get new stuff...but i don't agree that good quality dark furniture does not fit into a florida home...i get sick of seeing palm tree fabrics etc which tell nothing about the real design taste of the owner. it is good to be different if you can do it with flair :)

We brought ours. We like it. Pictures on our page. We rented a home and stored a lot in the garage when our house was being built. We had already sold our snowbird house. We had the good stuff put in a POD and stored and it was expensive.

It all depends what you want. I love our stuff. It was too nice to pitch.

There isn't much storage in these houses. You can't keep much in the attic because it gets very hot. If you like antique furniture bring it because there isn't much good stuff available around here.

I agree - keep what you love and don't worry about incorporating pieces you love into your Florida lifestyle. Unless you want everything to look like so many Florida homes all pastel and bland bring your stuff and show off your style.

We moved from Bel Air, Maryland in 2011 to a new courtyard villa. With going from a 2200 SF two story home to a 1200 SF villa, we figured we would buy most things new here. We kept the lanai furniture since we had purchased it new in 2008 when we enclosed our deck. We also kept our M/BR set since we had also bought it a couple of years earlier. All of the wall decorations and paintings we kept since they are expensive to replace.

We sold our home to the first couple to be shown our home, it was only on the market for 12 hours. We told the buyers about the furniture and what we wanted to keep and they bought the rest for $2,500. I had gotten some estimates and figured it would cost us $6,000 to move everything, plus we had too much. As it turned out, we had 72 boxes and the M/BR and lanai furniture moved by United Van Lines for $2700. Actually they were 3 weeks late in delivering the furniture to our new home in TV, so we filed a claim and got a refund check for $2,000 within 5 days. We had to pay the driver $2,700 upon delivery but like I said, the refund was very quick in coming.

We bought a guest BR set, a dinette, and 3 bar stools from Southern Lifetstyles in TV, that location is now a City Furniture. We bought a power love set and two recliners from Kane Furniture in Ocala, a desk from Staples, a Vizio 60" LED TV and a 42" Samsung TV from Sam's Club. That was about all we needed.

We had inside our house painted the day after we closed by Investment Painters, so when the movers arrived that would be out of the way. We got estimates from a couple of landscapers. Got a sun shade for the Lanai from RK Shades. Shopped for golf carts and put an order in for a new Yamaha. Had Tim 'The Toolman' handyman double shelf our master closet, put hand pulls on the kitchen cabinets, install attic steps in the garage, etc. The three weeks we were living here without any furniture and slept on an air mattress allowed us to get a lot of work out of the way.