Help needed in a terrible mess

Rodent94

Hello, I am in a terrible mess.


I am a hoarder and owe a lot of rent on containers, they are full of my personal belongings and thousands of books about 400 banana boxes of books in each container. If I don't clear them soon the landlord will sell the contents to pay off the debt.

I am emptying the containers by myself and getting nowhere. Because I have to earn a living to pay off the rent it doesn't give me anytime to clear the contents, and when I am clearing the contents I am not earning money to pay the rent.


I need two things, a army of people to help empty the containers and some way of fund raising to clear the debt.


If I don't do anything soon I will lose everything
I am paying a £1000 a month and am about £4000 in debt . I have ten containers.


Books no longer sell at car boots, so my only hope is to take out saleable books for online Amazon sale and throw the rest away.
In the last 15 years I have spent £100,000 on books and rent.


I have about 100,000 books to sort out.


I did think of doing a go fund me to pay off the debt, and appeal on local radio for voluteers to help with the sorting



Throwing them away is killing me.


Mike Royden

kazwookie

Are you on FB? if so put a post on your local pages asking for someone/ several people to help you.

List them on FB as £xxx per box unsighted and see if you can sell any.

Get the valuable ones out, and send to a specilist auction

Send the less ££xx ones to an auction / eby / house clearance etc

Rodent94

kazwookie wrote: »

Are you on FB? if so put a post on your local pages asking for someone/ several people to help you.

Thanks for your reply, I have just posted on facebook and one person has voluteered to help now to work out how to reply to them.



Mike Royden

OhtobeMortgageFree

My Dad buys a random box of books from an auction house every week. I have two elderly Great Aunts who he looks after and with his box of books he visits the first one to see if they would like any of the books, then the other. Any books that are left he then donates to the local charity shop.

Rodent94

Thank you for your reply.
I have been donating books to charity shops
but I still need help, as time is running out.

aimeemum

We buy books, Ziffit or similar may be a good place to try to earn some of the money back. They have an app or you can put the barcode in online. You and a helper could plough through quite a lot in a couple of hours too.

tacpot12

Do you have an inventory? If not, then making any money from your books is going to be impossible. No one; not a charity, a private collector, or a bookseller is going to pay anything like the value of the books without knowing what they are buying.

If you don't have an inventory already, then the books don't have any value that can be realised quickly. It will need an army, as you say, to come in an inventory the books and to list the ones with value online. This army isn't going to work for you for free. They might work for a charity for free if you are giving the books to a charity, but any gift would have include a requirement to remove the books before a certain date.

If you give the books to a charity, or let the landlord sell them, you are paying £1000 for storage that you will no longer be paying for, so you can clear the arrears of £4000 in four months.

Letting the landlord sell your books for you would appear to be a good outcome for you: your books are sold rather than destroyed or given away for nothing, all the work of realising the value in the ooks is taken on by the landlord, and you should get part of the debt cleared. The landlord will auction the books off, so they will go to someone that wants to pay for them. The money will go to clear your debt, which will reduce the time it will take you to clear the whole debt.

If you have any low value books at home, take them to the storage units and bring back any books you feel are more valuable. As a hoarder,, I know you will find this difficult; you will want to keep all your books, but if a choice has to be made, be pro-active and choose the books you want to have in your house. "One out-one in" should be your mantra for books at home.

Rodent94

My Biggest Major Problem is:

I have my own books and stuff from home mixed in with the stock.
photos letters clothes household furniture etc.


So I cant just let go of them without losing all my own stuff.


No inventory. It's taking me a lot of time to pull the stuff out. I have no help. It's not rubbish, but a large amount of non fiction hardback and paperback I also have about 400-500 banana boxes in each container. While I can't pay anyone, they can take away any of the discarded books for free.The problem is no one wants books, even free ones.

Rodent94

aimeemum wrote: »

We buy books, Ziffit or similar may be a good place to try to earn some of the money back. They have an app or you can put the barcode in online. You and a helper could plough through quite a lot in a couple of hours too.

I tried them years ago with 15,000 books, they only buy per bag by weight from charity shops not dealers.


Scanning would take too long, it's better for me to pick what I think would sell on Amazon. that would mean 95% of the books would have to be thrown away.


I don't really know todays value as I haven't sold any books at fairs or online for 5 years, and I am completely out of touch with current prices, I know I can scan them, but I cant say what the entire collection is currently worth. I only know what I have paid. I don't know If I should bite the bullet and give up on books. or give up on car boots selling non book items, I don't seem to be any good at this. If I didn't have this around my neck. I could make a fair living doing either on a smaller scale. But I dont know what to do

Martah

It sounds like you have a huge challenge to tackle both financially(debt) and psychologically (letting go of the books).

There’s is a website called abebooks that offers second hand books that I often buy from.

You can search sellers directory and contact individual sellers to check whether they would be interested in taking/ buying some of the books from you. They might be as I presume the books are in good condition. When you search it will show their location so you might be lucky and some could live locally to you and maybe help you sort at least a portion of your books.

Hoarding is quite difficult to sort out/address by yourself and it sounds like it is causing you a great deal of distress, good luck.

Rodent94

Martah wrote: »

It sounds like you have a huge challenge to tackle both financially(debt) and psychologically (letting go of the books).

There’s is a website called abebooks that offers second hand books that I often buy from.

You can search sellers directory and contact individual sellers to check whether they would be interested in taking/ buying some of the books from you. They might be as I presume the books are in good condition. When you search it will show their location so you might be lucky and some could live locally to you and maybe help you sort at least a portion of your books.

Hoarding is quite difficult to sort out/address by yourself and it sounds like it is causing you a great deal of distress, good luck.

The problem I have had, is that I haven't sold any books online for 5 years and have existed by selling non book items at car boots every week.


I have had a silent mental breakdown over the books over the period of time.


I used to sell on abe and amazon but some sort of mental problem stopped me selling. and yet that is my only way out of raising money.


The books themselvers are arent rubbish. I am not some crazed loon hoarding rusty screws and bits of string.


The problem I have is I cant mental address this.
Non book people say throw the books away.


What they don't realise is the books if listed on amazon would have a resale value of £200,000 plus


To give you an idea of how many books I have, If you took all the secondhand bookshop in liverpool stock together , I would still have more thenthem, same if you counted all the books in the charity shops