I suppose it doesn't matter what you do first when you decide to sell your house and downsize to nearly nothing. My first inclination was to call in a window cleaner, a landscaper and a painter, and that has been arranged.
The windows have been neglected for a while, and I know how important their cleanliness is to a prospective buyer. The landscaper has already removed some overgrown bamboo from the back yard and will be forming a vegetable and herb garden bed in its place. The painter will be refinishing the front door and the cabinets in the master bathroom.
Meanwhile, Sandy has begun cleaning out her clothes closet, a task she has been dreading. I won't include a photo here of its current status because, well, I tend to have a low pain threshold. Let's just say that the downward adjustment to her wardrobe will be brutal; I can't imagine how this will turn out.
The photo below represents a baby step--the first few garments of hers that I will be taking to a nearby church charity. There will need to be dozens of these trips, which I will quickly perform each time the discards are available, lest some of them make their way back into the closet.
As for me, I decided that my first job would be to consolidate my hand tools from two tool boxes and one tool drawer into a single tool box. I figured having three tool stashes wasn't that great an idea, as it would inevitably lead to unnecessary duplication, and I was right. The photo below represents the surplus, which I will offer to son-in-law Tyler:
The essential tools are now tucked neatly away in a small three-drawer toolbox in one of Phannie's belly compartments. I had actually been wanting to do this tool triage for years, but I didn't have the impetus until now.
To give Sandy a break from the hyperventilating episodes in her clothes closet, I asked her if she would like to stroll out to the storage shed and go through all the stuff she had saved from her years of teaching elementary school. Blowing back an uncharacteristically wayward lock of hair from her forehead, her eyes narrowed as she looked away from me and toward the nightstand drawer. Knowing the caliber of firearm kept there, I decided to drop the subject.
Later, after having been refreshed with a glass of iced tea, she sweetly came out and joined me in the storage shed. Seeing that she wasn't armed, I felt much better. She said that she was acquiescing to my suggestion because she knew there were many resources in her files that Mindy could use in home schooling grandsons Mason and Pryce. Much to my amazement, Sandy went through all seven containers and discarded the unusable items so that I could load the bins into Mae for our trip to Houston in a few days.
The bins were a little dusty after having been in storage for years, but we will clean them off when we unload.
One of the byproducts of all this work was a hoard of trash. We filled the recycle bin and six trashbags like the one in the photo below. I am always amazed at the stuff we hang onto that we shouldn't. I had quite a sense of accomplishment as I carried all of this out to the curb.
Although this was a good first day, it is a bit alarming in that we have hardly made a dent. I think I need some Geritol.
On Sunday, we decided to have a day of rest. After all, we deserved it after our hard work on Saturday! After church, Bubba and LouAnn met us for lunch, and we went over to their house to help put up their Christmas tree. That is, Bubba and I put up the tree while the girls went shopping. Asked what happened to their "day of rest," they informed me that shopping was indeed restful. Who knew?
It didn't take long for Bubba and me to get worn out from all our work, so we decided to take a break. From the looks of the photo below, Bubba doesn't mess around when he takes a break and neither do the dogs:
Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.
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