Craigslist to the Rescue - Moving, Giving Away, Finding People to Help Mom

In the process of moving my mom and downsizing her belongings, we have placed a bevy of ads on Craigslist. (Why not Freecycle? I adore the groups that let you offer things for free and post free things wanted. But their requirements to arrange a time / place with the taker at a certain time or arrange for pickup -- and get dinged if your item is gone for that reason -- with sometimes people flaking, is just too much work when you're in a hurry at least in most of my experience.)

To offset the moving costs and help us clear the apartment out we placed the following ads. Perhaps you might find them handy as a checklist!

• Many free and for sale ads - While it may seem scary to have strangers coming to your house, for the most part if you take care to have a quick phone chat, you will most likely end up with good folk. The people you might find most repellant are actually resellers who may descend on your parent's place like a hawk spotting a field mouse -- with great intention, velocity, and without regard to anyone's feelings.
  
  Note on selling books and records: If you have valuable items, selling direct online may be a better bet. The stores often pay 40% or less than they will sell them for. If you check Craigslist you will also see people selling books for other people to sell online. That's a lot of middle men taking a bite out of your potential profits. There are iPhone apps from online stores like Half.com that make it easy to scan and upload books for sale.
  
• Ads for local haulers or laborers to load our moving truck - The other option people suggested was picking up day laborers at Home Depot. Those stores are few and far between in parts of Los Angeles so screening people who responded on Craigslist was easier and more certain.
  
  We weren't using a moving company and found renting a truck gave us the time and space flexibility we needed. Unfortunately the street was too narrow for the Pod company's equipment to fit to load and unload the Pod or we would have gone that way.
  
  Pods let you load up a huge mobile storage unit basically then plop it down to store and pick it up when you're ready to move without loading and unloading.. (Important to check!!)
  
• Ads for ride share companions and people needing things moved to where we were moving
  
  We drove several loads and we were able to offset our  cost a couple of times by moving boxes and various large items which would have cost the other person a lot of money had they used a regular mover. It was a good deal for us too.
  
• Apartment swap ads and wanted - You may not think about it but if might be able to have someone else live in the space your parent would have been moving to, could you swap with someone who wants to move to your area and allow your parent to live in their space -- at least for a while? It could be a great win win for everyone, worth considering.

I'll add to the list of ads -- but for now I am off for the final move! Yes the final final move.