Chairish is best for designer furniture — think Herman Miller chairs — and antiques. Kaiyo is good for brand-name pieces from brands like West Elm or CB2, and if they accept your items, they’ll handle shipping and photography. AptDeco requires you to do a bit more work, but they’ll accept a broader range of items. Each platform will take a percentage of your sale.
If you’d rather handle sales yourself, you could go the Craigslist route, but I’ve had more success on Facebook Marketplace.
There are some downsides, though. If you’re like me, this may mean getting back on Facebook for the first time in years and being confronted by the fact that all the people you went to high school with are now homeowners (I, obviously, am renting). There’s also some legwork you have to do before listing your items, especially the larger stuff. I had to dig up the West Elm listing for my dresser, which I bought secondhand years ago, and take measurements and photos so I could post it.
Once the listing is live, you also have to deal with back-and-forth from prospective buyers, mostly in the form of an endless stream of automated “Is this available?” messages. There’s also the chance that the listing will fall through or that no one will buy whatever it is you’re selling. In the end, I decided to give my dresser away to the person taking over my old lease.
Giving stuff away is the simplest option, especially if you’re pressed for time or are too busy to handle the logistics of listing items and coordinating pickup. Big national charities, like Goodwill and The Salvation Army, usually accept furniture. You could also look up smaller organizations in your area that accept furniture donations.
While browsing Facebook Marketplace, I noticed some people try selling little things — trinkets, decor, etc. I also noticed that, in most cases, those listings stay up much longer than ones for, say, a dining table. If you want to offload your clutter quickly without throwing it away, there’s a much better, faster option: Buy Nothing groups.