As I wrote last week, cleaning out every room and closet in the house, and getting rid of so much stuff, has been incredibly therapeutic. However, I had no idea how good it would feel to watch complete strangers walk away with our old stuff, and have them all hand us money for it to boot! We ended up making $1500 in 4 days. Whoo hoo! Richard created a “moving fund” a few weeks ago to help pay for everybody’s gas on the way down there (the RV, the truck, Zach’s car and Frank’s car – we’re towing the Mustang). The $1500 would go a long way for the cars but it might just get the RV, which gets about 6 miles to the gallon, to the county line. Ha ha.

Ali and I took a painting lesson several years ago where we learned to paint a self-portrait. Mine turned out really, really, really bad. I used an old childhood photo and the results were…well, you be the judge…

I put the painting in the yard sale and I steadily lowered the price all through the weekend and, even at the lowest price (10 cents), nobody bought it but plenty of people commented on it.

One family considered buying it for a relative, laughing and saying, “We’ll tell her we thought it looked like her!”

One nice lady simply murmured, “Poor girl…”

We’ve succeeded in filling up the first two UHaul pods and those have been taken away. They’ll be dropping off the next two tomorrow. We only have a few boxes left, along with most of the furniture. Every room in the house has an echo now, which is kinda sad to me. But, it sure looks clean!!

We met with the property manager yesterday and he really likes the place. We’re going to be making more in rent here than we’ll be paying in Florida, which is nice. Our health insurance will be one-third to one-half of what we’re paying here. Like I wrote earlier, Florida doesn’t have state income tax and, while auto insurance may be a bit more, the amount of money we’ll be saving by living down there is pretty substantial.

Needless to say, we sure are enjoying downsizing and simplifying our lives!

Last week, I told you about my “selling-books-by-the-box” idea at the yard sale. Well, that didn’t work out very well. People wanted to thumb through the individual books and buy one-at-a-time. I agreed and, while I still had entire boxes available for sale, I listed them for $1 for adult books and 25 cents for children’s books and magazines.

On the second day of the sale, I abandoned the books-by-the-box idea entirely. Since I’d categorized the books, they were very easy for people to look through and lots of book lovers commented on that, saying how much easier it was here than at yard sales that have stacks of books all mixed together. We sold more than 90% of the books we had available so we made more money selling them individually than we’d have made if we’d sold all the boxes of books in bulk! On the last day of the sale, Richard combined the remaining books, lowered the price to 25 cents per book, and moved them all outside. We sold almost none since they were no longer categorized.

So, if you ever want to clean out your home library, categorize the books for greater sales!

This Week’s Masonism:

Mason has a doll he calls Thomas and he loves it when I make Thomas talk to him in a high-pitched voice, especially when Thomas calls Mason “Daddy.” His imagination is quite active and he really gets into the make believe game. Thomas calls me Grandma and Richard Grandpa. The other day, I was holding Thomas, and making him play with Mason, tickling him, and making the squeaky voice say, “I love you, Daddy.”

Mason took his friend’s tiny vinyl hand in his own, and replied, “I love you, too, Thomas…but who’s your mommy?”

Hugs to all!

Angela

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HOW TO REMEMBER, WRITE AND PUBLISH YOUR LIFE STORY! by Angela Hoy
Using Angela’s MEMORY TRIGGERS, recall memories that have been dormant for years, and record those memories in chronological order in your memory notebook. Using the memory notebook as your outline, write your autobiography! **Also works for biographies and memoirs.**