Purging T Minus 514 days: All the garbage

We are purging and throwing away so much stuff. My wife had suggested we rent a dumpster, but those are expensive to have for a long duration of time. Instead, we decided we would just put out an extra two trash cans every week. But would I get in trouble for doing that?

I called the garbage company and explained that we were spring cleaning and asked how much another one of their cans would cost. They told me the cost would almost double. Wow. But... they said our trash subscriptions allows us to put an extra 8 items out each week. An item could be a trash bag, or something large like a vacuum cleaner. That was a great answer because we had been putting out the equivalent of 3 or 4 extra bags each week and I was worried we would get in trouble.

I have several folding metal chairs. When the boys were younger, they sat in the chairs, leaned back, twisted and broke the chairs. Whenever they broke one, they didn't say anything - they just went and got another. This kept up until they broke all four folding chairs. I didn't throw them out because I thought I could just unbend them and fix them.  My honey-do list is around 12 pages long. I stay busy but there is just more work than I can keep up with! Fixing those chairs just kept getting placed lower and lower on my list. So, I purged them. Good bye broken chairs!

We brought several box fans from our last house nearly twenty years ago. Our current house has central A/C, so, we never needed the fans. Nevertheless, there they have sat in the basement for all these years. They are good working fans, well used, but functional. Now, they are purged.

We finally got Christmas put away. We love Christmas and like to keep it up through January. We have probably 20 totes and several boxes filled with Christmas decorations, so, putting away Christmas is a four or five hour job. I'm glad to say: task is done, Christmas is put away for another year!

We thought about what we might purge next. Over the years, the kids would bring home art from school. These little masterpieces were treasured and carefully packed away into totes. Uhm. Nine totes. That's right, we have nine totes of kid art. We are going to attack the kid art next. We'll keep just a few treasured pieces, take pictures of the best, and toss all the rest. That'll be a task for another weekend...

Purging T-minus 518 days: Board Games & Outside Toy Purge

Another week and more trash cans filled as we continue to purge.

We have twenty-five years worth of board games. The best solution is to just take the board games and toss them all into the trash. No one wants board games... maybe we'll get a quarter for a game at a yard sale. Regardless, it is difficult to take all these games with all the grand memories and throw them away, what an incredible waste! Instead of throwing them away, we decided to find all the missing pieces, assemble the games, and put them into rummage totes. We spent many hours looking for all those tiny cherries for Hi-Ho Cherries, and all the other game pieces to make games whole. I know it is a complete waste of time... but it feels like it is the right thing to do.

We have complete sets of various toys. My wife would like to sell them in Ebay or some other online site. I think that is a huge waste of time and just want to get rid of it. Neither of us have time for that. But maybe our adult daughter would be willing to sell some stuff in exchange for a cut of the sale. We decided to talk with her about this in a couple of weeks.

Once we had done as much as we could with the games, we went to a store room in our basement. The storeroom is lined with wooden shelves containing odds and ends: outside Christmas decorations we haven't used in years, snow sleds designed for children, volleyball nets, baby toys, and more. As we stood looking at all these treasures, we realized we didn't want any of it. We hung a sign on every shelf "Rummage items".

Next, we purged the "outside toys" totes. These totes have balls, Frisbee, and various items used during the summer for playing outdoors. We decided to save many of the items for our dog to play with and tare apart this coming summer, the rest went to the rummage shelves in the store room.

Then we went to the Beach and Pool totes. These totes had buckets and shovels from when the kids were young, and a bunch of pool floats from our many trips to Florida. Pool floats are cheap, so, we decided to donate everything and buy new floats when we move to Florida.

Our adult daughter has a lot of items stored at our house. She stopped by for a few hours to go through several of her totes and reduced things down.

The good news? We filled another two trash cans (could have used a third). Out of 250 totes, we now have 30 empty totes. We have five totes in the rummage pile, and most of the store room is all rummage.

We have a long ways yet to go. 190 totes remain, all the closets and cupboards, the draws, and everything else. But we made good headway!

Purging T Minus 520 days: Cost of moving

According to our plans, we have 520 days before we move. We decided NOT to go to Florida during the Summer of 2019 so that we could, instead, save money for the move. I have read many reports that people moved with just a few thousand dollars. I have read other estimates the cost is $10K-$20K. When our friends moved, they recommended we have $12,000 for the move.

Our goal? Save an much as we can. I don't know how much that'll be, but we are trying. We are still maintaining our life style (we aren't tightening our belt too much) but we are putting money in savings to support the move.

Purging T-minus 525 days: Christmas Decoration Purge

For whatever reason, the purging bug has hit us!

Every year after Thanksgiving, we transform our house into a Christmas wonderland. We love our Christmas decorations and have a lot of fun. We enjoy it so much, we never want to take the decorations down. Nevertheless, our goal is to take the decorations down by the end of January.

We decided that a first step to taking down the Christmas Decorations was to purge our decorations. We would get rid of anything we haven't used in years, consider getting rid of anything we didn't use this year, and question decorations as we put them away.

I have an entire tote of Christmas Lights where some of the bulbs are not working on the string. I have kept them in case I ever want to fix them, or, I need some spare bulbs. What I have been doing instead of messing with old Christmas Lights is to wait until the after-Christmas sales and buy a bunch of new strings at 75% off. As a result, I have several totes of new Christmas lights that can be used for future Christmases. So... why do I need a tote full of dead lights? Those went in the garbage.

Once we finished purging the Christmas items, we were struck by the purging bug and kept going. We have 250 totes in our tote store room (we call it Tote City). Every tote is numbered, inventoried, and categorized.

We created three piles: Totes to sort first. Totes to be donated. Totes for a rummage sale. We started collecting boxes and flattening them for moving. We also have a bunch of color stickers and we have been walking around putting stickers on things: Blue for rummage, red for donate, and yellow for keep.

At the end of the weekend, my wife and I sat on the couch completely overwhelmed. Our heads were swimming at the scope of all the work that needs to get done. My wife suggested we might need a dumpster, but those are very expensive. We decided, instead, to put an extra two trash cans to the curb each week until the trash collectors complain.

We decided that at some point, we are going to hire the trash collectors. They come to your house and you just point at things and they carry it out and put it in their truck. You then pay for how full the truck is. We'll use that for some of our large items when we get closer to the move.