Boxes and Bags and Junk Oh My!!!

Today was another busy day. We have totally cleaned out the outside storage building. It is amazing how much stuff we just hold on to. Tonight we brought all the Christmas decorations down from the attic. Oh my!! How could this have happened? It is kind of like gaining weight. You don't realize just how much you have gained until one day you take a good look in the mirror and there it is just staring back at you. Well, the Christmas stuff is the same way. You don't realize how much you have until one day you bring it all down at one time and see the multitude of boxes staring back at you. Now I know you are thinking how could I not know how much stuff I have since I decorate for Christmas each year? Well, I don't know! I think I bring it down a few boxes at a time so it isn't such a big deal. Ok, so tomorrow I go through all the Christmas stuff and make my usual three piles - one to toss, one to pack into a large tub to take to the motorhome and one pile to pack and send to the storage building. Christmas in August! I am so tired it probably won't be too hard to get into the toss mode.

Four more days till closing!!

Another Step Closer to Full-timing

Everything seems to come in small steps. Today we sold one of our big screen TVs. Notice I said one of our big screen TVs, we actually own two. Why did we need two you ask? Well, we had to have one of the new HDTVs because the picture is so much better, although I never did see that much difference. It must be a male thing! When you get the HDTV you have to get a different satellite along with a different receiver. One thing leads to another. This reminds me of the story my students always loved so much, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. The story goes that if you give a mouse a cookie he'll want a glass of milk and if he has a glass of milk he'll need something else and so on. This seems to be what we have been doing for years. It seems like we kept buying things to make ourselves happy. Then we found ourselves working harder in order to have those things to make us happy. Does working harder make us happy? I think it just makes us tired. Then why do we do this? Who knows, maybe we feel we should reward ourselves for working hard. Stop the insanity!! This is part of what helped us formulate the decision to simplify our lives- to full-time.

The two young men that came to pick up the TV appeared wearing their military fatigues. They were students at Auburn University. It certainly makes you feel good to meet such polite, well-mannered young men. If they are a sample of our young men in uniform our country is well represented. Thank God for all the men and women in our armed forces!! Because of them we do have the "freedom 2 roll."

Yard Sales or Garyard Sales

What is the difference in a yard sale and a garage sale? Is it that one is in the yard and one is in the garage? What if you have part of your stuff in the garage and part in the driveway? What kind of sale is it then? Ok, humor aside, we had our first yard sale a few weeks ago. This was an attempt to "purge" those small unnecessary items that you accumulate over 25 years. Finding these items is not hard, just stand in the middle of a room in your house and look around. You don't even have to move very much. They are there starring you in the face. You bought that little tidbit 10 years ago when you lived in another house or even another town. You kept it thinking you might use it again somewhere??? There it sits asking the age old question, "Why?"
Then you go to your closet. Wow! Now there is a dilemma. You have kept clothes in every size just in case you are that size again. You have kept clothes just in case they come back in style again . The problem is we now have houses with closets as large as bedrooms used to be. Do you remember when the average house on the market was only 2 bedrooms, 1 bath? Had maybe 1200 to 1500 square feet? Now the average house has 4 bedrooms, 3 baths and is anywhere from 2100 to 3000 square feet and that is the average. We won't even go into the increase in house prices. When I was growing up my closet was a small thing with a single door. We put our clothes up at the end of a season and got out the next season's clothes. At that time we went through them and if they didn't fit we handed them down and got something new (or new to us). It is so easy with the large, walk-in closets to just push those clothes to the back somewhere and keep them. The "old" days were so much more simple and made so much more sense. Hey, much like full-timing. We don't have room in our motorhome for tons of clothes so we keep only what we need and use. We store the seasonal stuff, like coats, in a tub in the basement. Some folks leave their seasonal clothes at a relative's house. The point is we don't keep it unless we use it.
In our house it seems we have been in the business of just acquiring more and more "stuff." One day we looked around and asked ourselves what we were doing. Do we need all of this? Hence, the yard sale. Full-timing makes you evaluate what is most important in your life. Do you need all of that "stuff" to be happy?
Notice I haven't mentioned the treasured items that really do have meaning and memories. What do we do with those items? Do they go into a yard sale also? Well, that is another post altogether and we will deal with emotion later.
In the meantime, we had the yard sale! It was quite an experience. We worked very hard, started work very early and made a little money. The important thing is that someone else now has a new treasure to add to their collection and to one day wonder, why???
It is true - "one man's trash is another man's treasure."