Purging Almost Done?

By Monday evening the main floor of the home had been gone through, stuff had been sorted,if we were going to store it I moved it to the pile to be boxed up, other stuff headed to the garage sale pile and then a few things made it to the room we are storing all of the stuff we've accumulated over the winter for the RV. I then went into the attic to start the migration of  30+ bins and other assorted things to the first floor. I had made a bit of headway when Dave came home from work, OT day so he gets out when he's had enough. At work Monday Dave discovered over the course of your career you can take a total of 3 years of leave, Dave's mind started going. Well another scenario has arisen, once the house sells he would take the first winter off for 6 months, come back in early May then apply for another 6 months once winter gets closer, this would provide us with enough to spend 6 months with out working, just touring around the warm sunny spots in the country.  Well after discussing this new scenario and running the numbers I went to shut up the attic, Dave insisted we finish emptying it. If we finished then it would be the last time we would have to be up there, 20 minutes later we had it emptied, our last trip to the attic. How good it felt to do something for the last time.

After waking at 11:30 and never getting back to sleep Tuesday started with all the 30+ bins sitting in our bedroom,it's 24'x24' so we had the room, since it wasn't a gym day I got started on moving the boxes downstairs right away. By the end of the day it all had been gone through, there's now 2 bins for the RV, 4 medium (16"x16") boxes of Hallmark ornaments, 1 medium box of Christmas decorations and 3 small boxes of Christmas decorations, still have to finish boxing some of it but that's what the final result will be. That's still a lot of Christmas stuff I know but when you consider there were 20+ bins stuffed full of Christmas stuff it's not bad. There are now 8 bins of stuff for the garage sale and 6 bins of stuff for my mom, hope she's ready. I plan to take the boxes to my folks house before I go get them in FL. Now to figure out a time for the garage sale.

A lot has been accomplished over the last few weeks towards the goal of purging. The laundry room, garage, a shed and shop still to go, most of the stuff in those places will not go with us so it's a matter of junking it or selling it. I look around the house and don't see anything that needs to be boxed up, just gotten rid of. The garage sale pile is huge, starting to tell friends about looking through it, it would take at least two truck loads to get it to Goodwill. When I think about how much we got rid of a few years ago and now this new pile it's just mind boggling. Lots of dollars, but so far haven't really missed anything we've gotten rid of. If we had thought about it we might have kept the big screen TV, pool table and card table for staging the first floor, 20-20 hindsight is great.

Today was a gym day, still tired from not sleeping Monday night but working out has helped the energy level. Spent the afternoon catching up on other blogs and looking forward to dinner out with a former co worker.

Angela and I worked together at the bank, while I'm at the tail end of the baby boomers she is nearer to the beginning. We worked together just over 6 years and enjoyed each others company immensely, we haven't seen much of each other over the last few years but with my new found semi retired status I am trying to catch up with some old friends. Angela and I have rowed Dragonboats together, walked all night in the Relay for Life and when I would go away on a road trip she was right there along with us. Angela would hang a US map in the break room, as I would update friends and family of our travels she would mark our route, when I returned we spent many a lunch talking of the things we had seen, some places she had been earlier in her life so she could really imagine them, she so enjoyed when we did Route 66. Because of Angela we always were aware of being in a new state, had to find Angela a rock, I'd then put them in a ziploc and write the state where we found it. In 2011 when we went on our 6 week 14,000 mile road trip I was no longer at the bank and hadn't talked with Angela much so there was no collection of rocks made though lots of discussion of ones that looked good, even did it last fall walking along the ocean. Recently while cleaning out the curio cabinet I pondered what to do with all the sea shells we collected over the years, Angela!!! Sure hope she wants them, don't want to throw them out.

 Heard from my niece on Facebook today, next week they head to Corpus Christi. Last year my brother bought a sail boat and they spend some of the school breaks down there. If the house was sold we could plan to meet them there, oh well one day.

We have friends in IL, they used to live back in NY, he was the photographer at our wedding, it is their son's birthday today.  He's 26 today, same as our older son, they were childhood friends though I doubt either remembers. Well on Facebook Rene said something about remembering a picture taken with the mom's and their son's (there were 3 couples) and of course who just got done putting all those photos in the computer :) so off I went to find pictures and I found the moms and sons and the dads and sons and they are now on Facebook, everyone is getting quite the laugh. What memories it brought back, the 80's big hair, gold chains those were the days.

Until next time...