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Last changes 2/11/2007
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One huge hurdle to overcome before going full time is eliminating
stuff. Stuff like furniture and appliances need to go; RVs
are fully equipped. Stuff like fine china and crystal are
impractical; they are easily broken in a moving vehicle. Stuff
like a full library of books can't travel with you; too heavy.
But the biggest reason for getting rid of stuff is that there just
isn't enough room to cart everything you own down the highway with you.
The volume of stuff makes the task hard. It has been amazing
what we have uncovered as we have been doing stuff reduction.
We found clothes that are out of style and out of size (believe
it or not, we are getting smaller) and with the labels still attached.
By far the hardest part is purely emotional. We find ourselves
"spending time" with special things while deciding how best to get
rid of them...memorabilia, gifts, favorite clothes, and, of course,
shoes! Some of the stuff we have is destined for our daughter.
She will be getting her "heirlooms" early. The rest will be
sold, donated and junked! |
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Our daughter Stacy and hubby Ken came to Baltimore for Thanksgiving and to
receive their allocation of stuff.
They also took the heritage items that we could not take with us
but we needed to keep like Marks's Viet Name shadow box. |
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They brought an extended Ford Econoline Van. They took the XCargo and mounted
it on the roof for more stuff space. |
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By the time we were done loading, the Van was filled up to the roof with stuff. |
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After we sold the house, we temporarily moved into a small rental farm house.
We thought we had getting rid of our stuff under control. But moving
from three bedrooms, family room, dining room, full basement, and garage to a two bedroom
very small house proved us wrong. |
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We found some useful places for some of our furniture.
We donated our queen guest bed to a deserving young couple who's
wife had MS, We had a son of an acquaintance that was just
starting out living on his own and we made him a real good deal
on furniture, lamps, bedding, and linen.
A lot of linen and clothing went to charity including Goodwill,
Purple Heart, and AMVets. We found furniture is not easy to give
to the charities.
We did manage to sell some of the furniture.
We found a way to give stuff away through
www.freecycle.com.
This is a free service where you list things you want to give away
and people in the local geography can request it and if you agree,
they have to pick it up. The rules are that no money is to
change hands. The goal of
www.freecycle.com is to keep
stuff out of land fills. |
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