Laura Lee News - Sale of a Lifetime

Sale of a Lifetime
Man Sold All His Possessions Online and Learned a Lesson About Life
By Jessica Rappaport, Tech Live

Think of your most prized possession. It might be a worn baseball glove, an Atari videogame console, or a faded concert T-shirt. At some point all of these memories, knickknacks, and furniture take over your living space. But would you get rid if it all and start fresh?

John Freyer decided to do just that — sell it all.

The reason to sell seemed simple enough. His Iowa City, Iowa, apartment was cluttered, in part because he loves to shop. (A man who loves to shop? Ladies, he's taken.)

But because he's a consummate thrift store junkie, his belongings had become a burden. He wanted to sell everything and move to New York City.

But this wasn't just an ordinary garage sale. At his Web site, Allmylifeforsale.com, Freyer created an online catalog of items and memories from his entire life. And back in the Fall of 2000, he posted 600 items for auction on eBay, ranging from physical objects to experiences.

"I instructed everybody to tag things that they thought were representative of my life in Iowa City," said Freyer. "My friend Sara Langworthy was tagged by somebody, so they could have a cheeseburger with Sara Langworthy," he said. EBay, however, caught on to the auction and ended it because Sara was a person, not an object.

Going, Going, Gone… But Not Forgotten

The mission became a project, not just a transaction from a buyer to a seller.

"Not only did I realize that I had attached all of these histories to these objects, which was the reason I was holding on to them, but also that other people would attach histories to these objects when they indeed took care of them," he said.

He asked the high bidders to send him e-mail messages and updates about the items they have bought from him. And they did, sending Freyer pictures and invitations to visit his once-prized possessions.

It took about a year for Freyer to sell everything, and he decided to use the money — $6,000 — to travel around the country, meeting the people who took part in his auction adventure. He chronicled his adventure on another Web site, Temporama.com.

When he finally returned back to Iowa City, he decided the project still wasn't complete, so he wrote a book, Allmylifeforsale. Freyer is currently touring the country promoting it.

The Meaning of Things

How does having nothing change who you are? For Freyer, the project kept changing in what it meant.

"All of these things that supposedly define us in a consumer culture — all of these things that are used to define us — the things that you buy, the goods and services that you consume. What happens when you don't have them?" Freyer asked.

Freyer's friend, Kembreu Mcleod, says the project tapped into what was going on culturally.

"I liked the fact that he basically constructed his biography through material objects," Mcleod said. "And the fact that he could says something about the culture that we live in."

At the book signing in Iowa City last week, Brian Graissi said he wasn't sure what to make of the whole project. He said he thought it sounded silly. But after he listened to Freyer read excerpts from the book, he changed his mind.

"It occurred to me that everybody does this at the end of their life, or someone else does it for them," he said.

Another of Freyer's friends, Sara Sauers said, "I kind of like that he created an object out of getting rid of his objects because we really never get rid of our objects. They're always with us."

A Fresh Start

Even though the project started with Freyer's desire to leave and establish something new, he ended up right where he began.

"I realized this wasn't the first time that I have gone through the process of trying to leave a place — get rid of things," he said. "I realized that you could make it work here on the prairie, or here in the middle of nowhere, and it could be digested in the broader culture through the Internet."

Now that he's in Iowa City to stay, Freyer tries to make each purchase meaningful. He browses through the second-hand stores that he once loved, but he opts to buy for other people more often than for his own home.

Source: www.abcnews.com