It all gets heave-ho into EBay

Consider this the ultimate spring cleaning: Lisa Perry, a 45-year-old lawyer and self-described pack rat, is selling nearly all of her belongings -- minus her dog, cat, photo albums and a stack of underwear -- on EBay.

The auction -- entitled “Everything Perry Owns!!” -- began Tuesday and is set to end Sunday morning.

“I am moving, changing my life, and want to purge all things from the past,” Perry wrote in her listing of 41 items that were part of the package, along with “many more things ... I don’t even know the inventory of!”

There are 10 coffee mugs from around the world; a collection of 33 rpm and 78 rpm records (including several Village People LPs); a milk crate filled with seashells from the East Coast; and a pile of school papers, including a second-grade report she wrote about her family’s Finnish heritage.

Winners must come to her apartment with moving boxes and haul everything away.

“I’ve always wanted to just get up and go,” said Perry, who plans to move to California in June in search of work and a warmer climate. “Some of my family are worried about my sanity.

“I don’t need all this junk. Who wouldn’t want to chuck everything and hit the road?”

At first, she planned to donate a portion of the proceeds to charity. But when her original effort last week violated EBay’s rules for charity listings, the company pulled the auction. Perry re-listed her auction as a straight sale and hopes to later donate money to a favorite charity, Heifer International.

As of Wednesday afternoon, there were only nine bids and a top offer of $566.66. But more than 1,000 curious shoppers have virtually sifted through her stuff. Perry said she’s also received hundreds of e-mails from people who learned about the auction from news reports and are praising her for opting for a life of “voluntary simplicity.”

“You’re doing everybody’s dream, to just sell-out and start all over again,” wrote one person.

“I did the same a few years ago and it is wonderfully liberating,” wrote another. “I’ve found that some things come back when you need them. For instance, I’m writing this at the desk I sold in 2000, which was bought by the person I’m now renting a flat from!”

The auction comes amid a lifelong search for new challenges. Perry said she has several college degrees, has taught communications courses in college, and worked as a bookseller. Though licensed to practice law in Minnesota, she instead teaches students to take the Law School Admission Test and works as a process server for a legal delivery company.

The EBay idea originated about a year ago when Perry was moving back to her hometown from Raleigh, N.C.

While packing up belongings from her two-bedroom condo, family members and friends wondered how they would all fit into her new one-bedroom apartment in St. Paul, Minn. Even Perry pondered why she was boxing up more than 1,000 books -- many of which she hadn’t read in years -- and keeping the sky-blue silk skirt and matching mohair sweater she’d bought for a millennium party.

She hasn’t worn it since. But when she looked at it, she reminisced about sipping champagne at Big Sky Resort in Montana.

“I figured it wouldn’t hurt to keep it,” Perry said.

Months later, faced with few employment prospects and mounting bills, Perry changed her mind.

“I have school loans to pay and no job with a law firm,” Perry said. “I wanted a clean slate.”

Last week, she used her cellphone’s camera to snap pictures of her stuff for EBay. Stereo equipment? Her computer? Refrigerator magnets? Out.

Her parents, living in Arizona, begged her to reconsider.

Some of her belongings are heirlooms: her grandmother’s sewing machine from the early 1900s; a 1917 record player owned by her great-grandparents; the parachutes her great-uncle used in World War II.

Perry agreed to give some of the items to family members for safekeeping and donate others to museums.

If the auction doesn’t net her minimum asking price, or if no one agrees to the Buy It Now price of $2,000, Perry has a backup plan: a garage sale.