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Tuesday, July 16, 2013

One Step at a Time

Writing about my thoughts must have been a good thing to do, because I have once again found a fairly peaceful place to "be". Craig had a bad morning yesterday, acting grouchy and raw. When we talked about it later he said he thought it was because he has been working on the big things and kept telling himself that when he got them all done, he would be finished! Guess what. He wasn't. There are still a lot of smaller things that need attention. Truth be told, I think he will be working on things around here until the day we close the sale.

Today we took down several window screens and screen doors and took them off to the repair shop. Since we don't have many bugs here, the holes were not a big problem and if we weren't about to list we would have let them be for another couple of years. It's the sort of thing that doesn't really matter a lot, but fixing them does add to the feeling of a well-kept property. I doubt a buyer will notice the new screens, but they might have noticed the holes and the patio screen door that had been walked into several times.

We also bought thirty 2 cubic foot bags of decorative bark to spread in the rose garden. Or what is left of the rose garden. Over the years the trees have grown and it is a bit shaded for good roses.  There are still some that struggle, and perhaps it would be better to plant some shade-loving plants there instead, but I'm really not much of a gardener. A fresh spread of bark is the best we can do to spruce it up. Tomorrow I will be spreading it.

Another task on my to-do list for tomorrow is to sort and box up several dozen cans of old paint, varnish, stain, and other garage chemicals and get them ready to take to the HWD on Thursday. I also have to deal with quite a few quarts of old motor oil. Every time we have changed the oil on the house generator we put the oil aside in the corner of the garage. I now have to find the right place to take it for disposal! I might leave that for next week, I was reading that the oil has to be in plastic containers. Ours is mostly in large jars.

Such a FUN summer! Oh well, next year we will be somewhere else and I can look back on this and be glad we got thru it.

One bit of bad news. One of my followers suggested I contact a company that sell replacement china to see if they would buy mine. I did. They said no. They already have an overstock of that pattern. Darn! It seemed like a good option.

My efforts to list on craigslist have not been fruitful either. I guess Goodwill will be getting a very big load soon. We are going to have one yard sale at the end of the month. I hope someone comes.  We are not very centrally located. I very rarely see any yard sale signs around here.  

8 comments:

  1. You're getting there and I really think you are accomplishing a whole lot more than you realize. We didn't have any luck on Craig's list either. Had two garage sales and then hauled truck loads of stuff to Good Will and the dump. Hang in there it will all be behind you soon.

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  2. We closed on our house last month so know what Craig means about the work on the house never ending, Dave would always see something that needed to be taken care of. So glad to be out of it.Garage sales, goodwill, a free sign in our yard and the dump were how we got rid of our stuff, so far haven't missed any of it. My girlfriend would remind me to "keep my eye on the prize" when things got a bit overwhelming. Soon it will be just a memory.

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  3. I sold 2 sets of china at our garage sales. I was shocked because it was a small town. I sold it cheap though. I planned on putting the 3rd set on Craigs list once we got to Florida, but unfortunately, it's still sitting in our storage shed.

    I understand about feeling like the work will never end. We felt the same way, but it finally did get done and we took off to be snowbirds while it sold.

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  4. It sounds like you are due for another holiday. When do you leave on your next trip?

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  5. I had three garage sales this past year...had to practically give the stuff away but that is the way it is. Nothing is worth much anymore ...so best to deal with it and move on. It does get discouraging but everything you do will make selling the house easier...

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  6. Ugh - know how you feel. Sometimes it seems like you will never get to the end of it, but you WILL! When you are on the road, traveling and seeing new sights, a lot of this will slip from your mind. Believe it or not, sometimes I look back at my old blog entries from a year ago or more, and say to Harry, wow, do you remember that? I had forgotten...blah blah blah - insert one of the multitude of items that used to be on our LIST. :)

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  7. In this "disposable" age, it is true that things do not have the value they once did. It's too bad because we all have some kind of investment in our belongings, whether it is financial or emotional. Hope your garage sales bring some success and that you are able to keep moving towards your goal.

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  8. Yep, some day it will be a distant memory. I didn't blog when I was doing that or the first couple of years on the road. Now I can hardly remember all the hard work of getting the house ready for sale.

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