Thursday, April 2, 2015

Aaaaaagh.....

Sorry for going radio silent for a little while.  It has been quite hectic around here.  We had the nice going away party last Sunday and it was nice to see my old friends and make some new ones.  Of course, as dizzy as I've been recently, I totally forgot to take any pictures while I was there (doh!).  I do want to thank everyone who stopped by to wish us well.

Some "provisions" we were given during the party.

Since the party we've been running around like the proverbial headless chickens trying to get rid of stuff.  It still amazes me how much cruft we have to deal with.  The only furniture we have left is our mattress lying on the floor in our bedroom, one table, and a couple dilapidated dinette chairs.  It kind of reminds me how we first started living out of college...not a lot of furniture.  The difference is all the small stuff though...man you can accumulate a lot in 18 years.

Many trips to every imaginable donation place (Goodwill, ARC, Habitat for Humanity, etc.). A trip down to the metal recycling center with old computer carcasses (steel cases, motherboards, hard drives...all separated of course), fence stakes, buckets of hardware, and other metallic things we couldn't find a home for or reason to keep (it is amazing what they will recycle..and depending on what you have there is some money in it..between our two trips we made $125).

Boxing up the things we want to store like picture albums, heirlooms, paperwork.  Decided to buy a small fire safe to store some paperwork in lieu of paying for a safe deposit box for some necessary (but not exactly valuable) paperwork.  Then stashing these boxes with nearby relatives.

Spending some quality time on eBay and Craigslist trying to get a few more dollars for some of our better "stuff".  Our mountain bikes are now sold, so we will be looking for some possibly folding ones once we get to Florida.  Running to CarMax and EchoPark to get appraisals on our old Pathfinder (which should disappear later today...after we cart the table my computer is currently sitting on to Goodwill).

The almost gone Pathfinder...and house...I hope.

And yesterday we met with the real estate agent.  The sign is hiding in the garage, and we are prepared to list the house.  That should happen early next week.

The sign waiting in the garage.

The goal was to be cleared out by last Tuesday...but this isn't any different than any other plan made by a cruiser...a wave comes along and wipes away any trace of that plan scribbled in the sand.  Now I guess we will see if we are on the road by Easter.  Keeping my fingers crossed.

8 comments:

  1. Hi,
    Just started following your blog as we, too, are just weeks away from casting off the dock lines :). We are in Florida and just thought I would share that folding bikes are pretty easy to score down here on Craigslist. We've bought three in the last few months. After we bought the first one we realized we wanted two bikes so while searching for another we found a pair of stainless steel dahons . We then sold the first one for more than w paid for it. You shouldn't have any problems picking them up down here! Good luck with your final preparations, we look forward to following your adventure!

    Deborah (S/V Wrightaway)

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    1. Thanks Deborah. I was planning on checking Craigslist once I got down there. Good luck with your adventure as well.

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  2. I can't believe someone hasn't snapped up that Pathfinder yet! We love ours - she's been good to us and I'm sure yours would make someone else very happy. We're having a survey done on Monday so (fingers crossed) we may in fact see you guys on the water sooner rather than later.

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    1. Pathfinder and hopefully house won't be an issue. Good luck on your survey!

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  3. I've forgotten. Is the boat still in Brunswick? We might be there in a few days.

    Deb
    SV Kintala
    www.theretirementproject.blogspot.com

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    1. Hey Deb, I saw you might head that direction...of course the boat is in Palm Coast FL and I am in Denver right now. Sent you an email.

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  4. Good luck with the clearing out process, looks like you are in the home stretch! We did the same thing last year and the year before, we were actually worried that we would have so many donations it would spark an audit! So far so good. See you out there sometime....
    Chris and Joyce

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    1. Yeah, has felt we have been in the home stretch for a while now. Haven't been able to claim donations for the past couple years, so I don't think that will be an issue for us...but hope you don't get audited. Will keep an eye out for you when we finally get to the boat.

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