So how is the endless process of downsizing? Still endless. Many trips to Goodwill, many bags of stuff taken to the office and left out for co-workers to scavenge, multiple listings on EBay, Let It Go and Facebook Marketplace, and we still have TOO. MUCH. STUFF!!! We have sunk so low as to crash our friend’s community yard sales. Crashing other yard sales is really a lot of fun and I highly recommend it. We drive up with a couple of Element’s worth of crap (our car is a Honda Element, so it holds a lot of crap), set it out, break out the coffee and snacks, and basically have a bit of brunch while we collect a profit. All in all, not a bad way to go about things.
However, for all of our progress, we still have not tipped that edge to the side of an emptyish house. Yes, there are gaps and empty cabinets and shelves and such, but overall, the house still feels mostly intact. I swear the cats are dragging more crap into the house while we sleep! Each day we try to make a bit of progress, sometimes big, sometimes small. Tonight, we rolled coins…lots and lots of coins. We will be very well prepared for coin operated laundry machines once we hit the road, that is for sure. In the process we also found quite bit of Philippine, Hong Kong and Singapore coins from our past travels as well as surprising number of Sacajawea dollars, which we have absolutely no clue of how we obtained them….probably part of the cats’ nocturnal house restocking program. It is interesting how often we look at something nowadays and ask ourselves, “now where did this come from?”
This week’s lesson learned – Lots of folks give advice about how to deal with boxes of photos. Take pictures of the pictures and then pitch the original they say. To this I say hogwash. Taking pictures of pictures so that you can get rid of the originals is an aggravating process. There is always an issue, either with light bouncing off of the photo or cropping or a curl, something to make me want to toss the photo back in the box and the box in the trash. Maybe scanning will work better. In the meantime, I will eat ice cream. I mean, really, someone has to clear out the freezer, and it may as well be me.
What’s next? Coming up next is another yard sale, this one actually at our own house, closely followed by another trip to Goodwill with the items that do not sell, and then my sister and her husband are coming with a moving truck for the furniture. We are giving most of our furniture to one of her sons who is setting up his first adult household after graduating from college. Some other items are going to my sister’s place for set up in a spare bedroom. They have also graciously offered us some of their spare attic space, as apparently their attic is the Taj Mahal of attics and their stuff is lonely up there all by their lonesomes. We are grateful in the extreme for this offer, especially knowing that my sister likes clutter about as much as I do, which is not at all.
Since our RV has been delayed until September, we are going to hold back a couple of comfy chairs for now, but I am hoping that this will do the trick to finally make it feel like we are making the kind of progress we want to be ready for the RV. If not, there is always more ice cream in the freezer that needs to be cleared out.
Cheers!
Carolyn
Runaway Rowes 