T minus 486 days: Making the plan

Everything I have read has told me that in order to have a successful move to Florida, you need a plan. I'm a certified project planner... so... that sounds like a great idea!

My wife and I went to a coffee shop and spent several hours brainstorming all the things we needed to get done before moving to Florida (see below). There are some trips in the North East we want to make, some sales we want to have, and more.

After brainstorming, I aligned each item to a season: Spring 2020, Summer 2020, Fall 2020, Winter 2021, Spring 2021, and finally Summer 2021. I then went through each season and aligned every item up to a month. And finally, I entered everything into a free project tracking web site named Trello.com.

There are several downsides to Trello:
1. The free version only tracks due dates, not start dates. That can get confusing.
2. You can add check lists to the tasks (called cards). However, the free version doesn't let you assign due dates to each check list item, nor assign each check list item to a person

There are several good things about Trello:
1. It is free
2. Everyone in my family can access it
3. It integrates with my family's Google Calendar, so, everything on the plan shows up on the calendar
4. Can access it on a computer or on a phone
5. Did I mention that it is free?

Our  tentative plan is to have 1 or 2 PODS that we pack several weeks before the move, and then a moving truck for everything we'll need right away. Here is our plan:

15 months
Youngest gets his permit
Prepare goals for summer trip to Florida
Sell an old vehicle
Reserve tables for the May rummage sale
More training for our dog so he'll be good for the move

14 months
Meet with financial advisor
Clean out the garage for the rummage sale
Arrange for a truck to get the tables for the rummage sale
Request days off from work for the rummage sale
Practice driving with my sons so they can get their licenses before we move
Find a house painter
Start selling on Facebook Market Place
Explore using EBAY to sell stuff

13 months
Wash and clean items for the rummage sale
Register the rummage sake with the town
Price everything for the rummage sale
Hold the first rummage sake
Find a Florida Real Estate agent for our summer Florida trip

12 months
Oldest son graduates from college and gets a job
Youngest son gets a summer job
Wife and I get our enhanced licenses so we can fly to Florida
Request days off for the Florida trip to look at real estate

11 months
Trips in the North East to see things before we move

10 months
Go to Florida to look at real estate
Have six rooms inside the house painted

9 months
Boys get their licenses

8 months
Create a moving budget

7 months
Decide how we are moving (PODS, Trucks, etc)

6 Months
Final quotes for moving
Consultant tells us what to fix on the house so it will sell

5 Months
Continue to purge

4 months
Reserve tables for the second rummage sale
Finish fixing up the house for sale
Research if our home insurance will cover the move
Find someone to drive our moving truck to Florida (if we go that option)

3 months
Book the PODS and/or moving truck
Buy moving supplies
Reserve hall for our graduation/anniversary/moving party
Arrange a truck to move the tables for the second rummage sale
Request days off from work for the second rummage sale

2 months
Dispose of any paints and chemicals
Final planning for the graduation/anniversary/moving party
Notify the town about our second rummage sales
Have the second rummage sale
Find movers to load and unload the moving trucks and pods
Create a receipt and bills folder
Arrange dog sitting for the moving days
Get the pets a pre-move check up
Get real estate agent to list the house

1 month
Plan the drive to Florida
Wife submits two week notice
Talk to doctors (dentist, eye, hair dresser, specialists, etc) toget records, referrals, and recommendations
Transfer all prescriptions to Florida
Plan how the PODS will be dropped off in Flordia
Purchase decorations and arrange food for the graduation/anniversary/moving party
Have the graduation/anniversary/moving party
Schedule utility disconnects
Dissasemble book shelves
Final moving sale
Gather important papers
Have the PODS arrive 2 weeks before the move
Final computer backups

0 Month
Change of address
leave the house clean


Planning is the easy part. Now we have to execute on these plans. Hopefully, in 486 days we'll be on our way to Florida!

T-Minus 491: Purging Baby Clothes

One of the hardest things to do has been to purge the baby clothes and the kids clothes. Every piece of clothing comes with so many memories. I can remember my daughter running down Main Street of Magic Kingdom in one outfit. The time we went to Niagara Falls in another outfit. The family Christmas pictures. Playing in the back yard. There wasn't a single shirt or outfit that didn't have some memory attached to it!

We decided to take pictures of our favorites and to put everything into three piles: Keep it, Donate it, and Sell it.

We took  A LOT of pictures! We had a nice assembly line going. My wife would set the clothes down and make it look nice. I would snap the picture and then move the item out of the way for the next item. In rapid fire we took many hundreds of pictures.

The clothes were packed away carefully and they are like new! If anything doesn't sell, we will either keep it for the May 2021 yard sale, or, donate it and get rid of it.

You aren't interested in reading about my tote stats, but, it helps to keep me motivated: Out of 270 totes, we have gone through 41. 27% of our totes are now empty! 6% of the totes are my adult daughter's belongings and she has been stopping by on the weekends to go through those.

t-mins 492 days: To Build Or Buy?

In one of the facebook groups, I recently asked "If time wasn't an issue, would you build or buy?" The answers were interesting. The most compelling answers explained that pools have a horrible resale value. You'll pay a lot of money for a pool, but only get a little bit of money for the pool when you sell the house. Therefore, it is cheaper to buy a used pool instead of install a new pool. Also, if you want a pool in a new house, some contractors will require you to pay for the pool upfront (either the entire thing, or half) in cash.

Other interesting answers were:

PRO FOR HOME BUILDING

• Newer houses are built better to protect from hurricanes (not sure if that is true, but, that is what someone wrote)
• Same price as buying a used house
• You get to pick out everything from door knobs to lighting fixtures
• New neighborhoods do not have large trees that might fall on your house in a storm
• It might be OK if you can customize it
• New home pools are tiny
• It can be more expensive to fix a pool than to build a new pool

CONS FOR HOME BUILDING

• New houses are built ontop of each other with no land. The houses are almost touching each other
• You or a hired home inspector must regularly check on a new house build
• New developments might have to pay a CDD Fee to offset the cost of infrastructure to pay for that development
• New homes settle, which crack titles and requires rugs to be stretched
• New builds often get delayed, which complicate time frames
• Taxes after construction is completed is a lot more than before it starts. People don't always plan for that

PRO FOR HOME BUYING

• You know what you are getting. You know what the neighborhood looks like.
• You don't have to buy landscaping. The landscaping is matured.
• Older homes might be better built because they are throwing up new houses as fast as they can
• Older neighborhoods have character, new neighborhoods are all cookie cutter
• Problems with the home construction have already been worked out
• Established neighborhoods have larger trees which provide shade
• Having neighbors who have lived there for a long time
• They often come with window coverings and appliances

T-Minus 493: Florida Car License

I have heard many people talk about registering your cars and getting licenses in Florida. They say the cost is somewhere between $400 to $600 per car! But no one has done a better job at explaining what to expect than Florida with Five. Please consider the following video to be essential viewing.

T-Minus 494 days: Visiting Tub City

We have 270 totes. Most of these totes are in a 600 sqft storage area named Tub City.

All of the totes are numbered and inventoried. If we are going camping, we would grab the camping tote. If we are going to the beach, we grab the beach tote. If we are decorating for Easter, we grab the Easter totes. There are many other totes used to store old toys, old clothes, paperwork, and many other items.

We have Totes in other locations as well. The majority are in Tub City, but, we have a 120 sqft storage room with some totes, there are totes in everyone closet for storage, I use some totes in my wood shop for painting supplies, plumbing, etc, and the toy room/game room has some totes to help with organization.

A major purging effort has been to address all the totes. Freeing up totes will allow us to use the totes for packing. It will also free up space for staging rummage sales and other move activities.

T-Minus 496 days: One story or two story house?

I have always lived in a two story house. In fact... count the basement... three story house. Stacking floors on top of each other is the cheapest way to get square footage. It is also nice to have that separation between activities happening upstairs versus downstairs. Having a house with stairs helps to keep you healthy because going up and down stairs is great exercise.

But who hasn't fallen down the stairs? Whether it is a full top to bottom fall, or you just miss the bottom step? Falling on stairs is dangerous and painful. I know - I just went to go up the stairs, my toes didn't have a firm grip and slipped off the step mid stride. My foot hurts, my knee is skinned, the hip I landed on hurts. What a pain!

I am fifty years old. I'm not a young guy anymore. I have decided that I don't want to use stairs in my Florida home. Many of the houses we have rented in Florida during the summers do not have a second floor, and those that did - I never went up stairs. We would get a two story house and put the kids upstairs. The upstairs was their domain.

When we go to Florida, I will likely get a two story house to minimize the cost per square foot. When I do, my adult children and guests can have that second floor. I'm getting a suite on the first floor and plan to rarely, if ever, see that second floor. If my adult children are on the second floor, I'll make them maintain the second floor as part of their rent.

What are your thoughts? I'd love to hear them.

T-Minus 497 days: Florida with Five, SunRail, PODS, and more

A three day weekend meant three days of purging! We finished the kid art, then moved to kid books, some baby items, old notebooks from work, and my wife went through several totes containing her desk items from previous jobs.

We have now sorted 33% of our 270 totes! And 15% of our totes are now empty. 15% doesn't sound like much - but that is 41 empty totes!

We continue to watch YouTube videos as we purge. This weekend we binge watched Florida With Five, a family with five kids who moved to Florida one year ago. The area they live in sounded so familiar, so, we decided to figure out where their house was. I know, that seems super creepy. But we have lived in that area for 8 or 9 summers and know it really well. What got us interested was when they talked about the Sun Rail, a commuter train that goes to Orlando. In all the research I had done and all the time spent in the area, I had never heard of the Sun Rail before. How was that possible?

It took some work during lunch time, but, we narrowed it down to what street they lived on. I had drove by that area five years ago and was amazed at how developed it had become! I had never considered that area because when we drove through it, it was just fields and golf courses.

And that is where the creepy part ends. I found the street, but I probably couldn't find it again without a ton of work. I would never tell anyone or care to go there. I just wanted to better understand the SunRail and now I see how developed that area has become, which I didn't previously know.

The SunRail extension to the south completed in July 2018. You can now take the rail from Poinciana all the way into Orlando and beyond. I plan to learn more about this because it could be a way to beat the I4 traffic!

We watched many videos that showed how people packed a pod. From what we saw: people don't move to Florida with furniture! I don't know how anyone can afford to move to Florida and buy all new furniture - furniture is expensive! We decided we needed to take a trip to Florida to do a final search for houses, and during that trip, visit some of the furniture stores in the area to see what the trick is.

A few other things we noticed was the use of different sized boxes to maximize every inch of the pod. A final thing we noticed was how much packing material often gets used: they'll wrap something in a blanket, then wrap that in plastic. Then they'll line boards and cardboard around that. The trick, from what I learned, is to pack the POD in sections - building walls of belongings. After each section (or wall) you use rope to hold it in place. This continues, section by section and wall by wall until the entire POD is filled.

I also learned that a POD can hold 10,000 pounds, however, the pod itself is 2500 pounds, so, really it only holds 7500 pounds (the same as a 22 foot moving truck). That may actually be a problem because I have a home gym filled with weight machines, dumbbells, and free wights.... how the heck am I going to move all of that? Perhaps I'll just sell everything and use a health club membership in Florida.

The weekend ended with three days of purging. We filled eight garbage bags with trash, and two garbage bags for the yard sale/donation. It was a lot of work and we are exhausted!

T-Minus 498: Take A Picture And Keep A Memory

Purging is difficult. We look at something and all the memories come back. It might be some clothes that a child wore as a baby, or a book that we read each night. Nearly everything we have has memories attached to it. If we throw it away, we are throwing away all of those memories.

To make it easier to throw treasures into the garbage, we decided to take pictures of items so we could look at the pictures and relive the memories. It isn't the same as holding it in your hands, but it is pretty good.

We make a pile of the items we want for pictures (which isn't everything, but it is a lot) and then I line the picture under a good light and use my phone to take a photo. The last step is to do any necessary cropping and adjusting of the photo (which just takes a few seconds). I have probably done 1000 pictures this way in the past several weeks.

After a few days, our Apple iCloud starts to fill up. I download the pictures to my laptop and make a couple of backups. Then I copy the pictures into our Google Drive so it can live in the cloud. This process assures we have four copies of each picture: one in the cloud, one on the laptop, one on a USB drive that goes into our fire safe, and one on a USB drive that goes into my wife's desk draw at work (offsite storage).

It is very convenient to have everything captured electronically. It is a breeze to just flip through all the pictures, to be able to look at the pictures on any device, and to put the pictures into slide shows that act as a screen saver on our smart TVs. Instead of these memories being tucked away in a tote for a decade, never seen - we now have the memories at our finger tips. I share the pictures with our family, and the kids have access to all their old art work. I don't have to worry about it getting destroyed by fire or flood. And best of all? It takes up no room. We don't have to move it to Florida! It is in the cloud and it will go where ever we go.

T Minus 499 Days: Kid Art and Tote Inventory

I talked about Tub City and our Tote Inventory in my last post. I completed the tote Inventory update and I was wrong... we do not have 250 totes. We have 270. How many totes is 270? It is enough to fill an entire16 foot moving pod with totes left over!

Last week, started purging the nine totes full of kid art. The kids come home with a backpack full of papers, the papers get dumped onto the kitchen counter, the counter gets full, and all the papers go into a tote and sit there for a decade or two. The tote is in Tub City - out of sight, out of mind. We don’t care about it... u til we have to. As part of purging we had nine totes to purge.

We finished the purge today and got it down to one tote (with some room to spare). We filled another four trash bags! As mentioned before, to help with the purging decisions, I took pictures with my phone  of anything we thought was valuable. 750 pictures! The great part, however, is those pictures are taking up space in the cloud instead of in my basement.

As we cross over the T Minus 500 day mark, we have sorted through 30 percent of the totes, most of which are now piled up empty!!

T-Minus 500 days: overwhelmed

We have hit the 500 day mark! After a decade of waiting, we are now only 500 days away from our move!

For a long time I have warned my wife that it is expensive to move things 1200 miles and some things will not go with us. Defiantly, she has said “yes it will”. Tonight, some reality sunk in. 

We watched a YouTube video that estimates a 16x8x8 pod would cost $2500. The pod actually only hold 870 cubic feet, and only that much if you are really good at packing it. One pod would hold at most 230 of our totes. It would cost approximately $11 to ship each tote!And that’s just the totes! 

A large cabinet in our living room would take 20 percent of a pod. Panic set in as we realized we might need four 16 foot pods! That sounds insane. 64 feet of pod space? 3500 cubic feet to move a 3500 square foot house (counting the basement)? 

The magnitude of this endeavor is settling in, and it feels a little overwhelming today. 

T-Minus 501 Days: Florida Suburban Dad

My wife and I have been watching a ton of YouTube about moving to Florida. We came across the Florida Suburban Dad and watched many of his videos. Suburban Dad has several... odd... tattoos on his arms and when we watched his first video, my wife said "Change the video!" but we stuck through the first video and found that we enjoyed what he put together.

Suburban Dad has over 9000 subscribers! I live that he is from upstate New York (because we are too). Something else I like about Suburban Dad is that he doesn't just sit in front of a camera at his kitchen table and talks. He walked around his neighborhood, drove to work, walked down the beach, sits by his pool (or in his pool) and talks. He does sit by his pool and talk a lot, but that is OK - I can imagine me sitting out by the pool talking with people!

Something we notices with all the YouTube videos is people do not tend to think much before they record. They just turn on the camera and ramble. Suburban Dad does suffer from that. IMHO, someone should think about what they want to say, jot down a few ideas, and record with a clock. If the clock says you have talked about a subject for five minutes? You've probably covered the subject and can move on. Instead, youtubers repeat themselves, clarify, make the same points over and over, and circle conversations. It can get annoying. Suburban Dad does this, but... you get to enjoy looking at the beautiful Florida back ground when you get bored hearing the same thing repeated, so, it is OK.

The best video that everyone needs to watch? How he maintains his pool. If you plan to have a pool in Florida? You need to watch this video.

Suburban Dad has a ton of videos and I have only watched a few, but, I look forward to watching more while purging the house.

T Minus 502 days: Tote Inventory

I have previously mentioned that we have 250 totes. Nearly all of them (with just a few exceptions) are 18 gallon. I have a 600 square foot area in my basement that contains nearly all the totes, stacked five totes high in four rows. This area is known an "Tub City" and I am the "Mayor of Tub City".

Every tub is numbered and inventoried into a spreadsheet. If we need the camping gear? I know where that is at. Time to decorate for Easter? I know where the Easter tubs are. Need to decorate for a birthday party? All the tubs with decorations are over here.

Our purge has caused many totes to become emptied and moved around, so, it has become important to update the tote inventory. The updated inventory tells me how many tubs have been purged and when they were last purged.

I am happy to announce that we have went through 26% of the totes! And we have emptied 17% of them. We still have a long ways to go with purging the totes (and the rest of the house), but we are making progress!

T Minus 504 Days: Lakeland Florida

My wife and I have started watching videos about moving to Florida in the evenings before heading to bed. We kinda know where we want to move to, but we could be easily swayed by better jobs and more affordable housing.

Lakeland Florida is a community that sits between Orlando and Tampa. Living in Lakeland would provide opportunities to tap into both city's job markets. We could have the benefits of living near Orlando and  having the job market for Tampa (which is the best in the state for computer jobs). It is listed as the 59th best places to live in the US with a low average housing cost.

We decided to watch several YouTube videos that talked about Lakeland.

We watched Cost Of Living in Lakeland.
Lakeland, city on the move
Lakeland, a great place to live
10 things to do in Lakeland
Goodbye Lakeland

After watching these, we decided Lakeland Florida was not for us. There isn't really isn't in Lakeland that interests us. Some of the big selling points of Lakeland is the architecture, which I don't care about. And the small town feeling, but it isn't a small town at all. Apparently there are many swans, which doesn't interest me because I am coming from an area with a lot of geese. It seems like the best parts of Lakeland are the things that are not in Lakeland (being close to Disney, Orlando, beaches, etc). We would be accepting Lakeland in exchange for relatively long work commutes.

I am sure there are people who live in Lakeland who could make a long list of things they love about it, but, I couldn't see anything interesting in the videos. I admit, I have never been to Lakeland, and, if I ever did visit Lakeland perhaps my thoughts would change. But I'm just not feeling it.

T Minus 509 days: Purging Work Mementos

I had a couple of hours after dinner so I grabbed a tote that had mementos from places I have worked. Whenever I leave a job, I empty the draws and the take stuff off the walls, put it in a box, and the things I want to keep go into my Work Memntos tote.  I put everything into several categories:

• Throw Away - if I looked at it, didn't remember it, it apparently didn't mean much to me
• Scan it and throw away - Making a computer picture of something is a great way to remember something without actually having to keep the item. I will have a picture of it that I can look at whenever I want. The pictures are stored in the cloud, so, they don't take up any room and I can revisit it from anywhere I am.
• Scan it and keep it - some items have value to me and I still want to keep it. Scanning it provides a bit of security in case the original ever gets destroyed.
• Keep it - Most of this category was kid art that I had hanging in my office. 
• Put it somewhere else - pictures went to the picture box

Kid art was a different thing to make a decision about. I can imagine the moments when my child was making that item, thinking about how happy I would be to get it, and thinking about how proud I would be of them. And then a birthday comes or father's day comes and they go get it from where ever they were hiding it, and bring it to me. And their eyes light up as I look at it and admire it.

And now I'm looking at it again, ready to throw it in the trash? Not today. Maybe in a future purging I'll feel differently, but, today? Kid art went into the keep it pile.

I found a 15 year old work phone directory and spent a few moments flipping through it. I found all these names that triggered memories, without that directory those memories would never have come to me. It seems very odd to keep a 15 year old work directory... but I decided to keep it. I'm sure I'll throw it away in a future pass through this material.

Another odd thing a kept: a small booklet containing quotes from people throughout history. I flipped through the booklet an read many really good quotes and decided to keep the booklet.

I took at 18 gallon tote that was half full, and reduced it to just a two folders of items (about two inches deep total). 

T-Minus 510 days: Eight Week Moving Checklist

My wife found THIS 8-week moving check list from PODS.COM. This is a very good list, however, I can't imagine trying to do everything for a move in only eight weeks! Nevertheless, the article provides some great ideas to think about.

For example;

Contract the local chamber of Commerce for the city you are moving to and request a new resident pack.

Create a floor plan of your new home and start figuring out where all your furniture is going to go. It would be good to know that huge dresser isn't going to fit in your new house BEFORE you move it thousands of miles.

Confirm with your insurance company that your possessions are covered during transit.

Plan for the proper disposal of some items such as chemicals, paints, batteries, and pesticides. You can't just throw them into the normal garbage.

These are just some of the great suggestions!

T Minus 509 Days: Never return home?

We didn't do any purging today. Instead, we watched various YouTube videos to get ideas about moving. We watched videos for packing, arranging moving companies, and checklists with all the things that have to be done as part of a move.

One video said something that hit me like a ton a bricks. The host said "On the last day, do a walk through to make sure you haven't forgotten anything because tomorrow you won't be able to return to the house."

Won't be able to return to my house?

I built this house. It started as a field. I worked with an architect to design it. A builder to construct it. I did work during and after the construction. Every corner of this house is there because I decided to put it there. The lights, fixtures, and locations of electrical outlets were all my decision. I finished most of the basement all by myself - adding walls, ceilings, and floors.

This house was built after many years of apartment living to save money. We pinched pennies and dreamed about a day when we would have a back yard for the kids to play in, and room enough for the kids to have friends over. When we finally signed the papers for the house? We all did a happy dance, a dance we had been planning to do for years.

I built this house 17 years ago to raise our children. I remember my kids driving their riding cars around the kitchen and banging into the walls. Children running down the halls screaming in joy. The noise that was so loud sometimes, but I told myself to enjoy it because someday I would miss it all. I remember the long conversations with my daughter in her bedroom. Playing video games with my sons in the living room. All of the holidays and decorating the house in ways that became tradition. My wife baking cookies in the kitchen. All of the incredible cakes my daughter made. My son coming home from school and telling me about his day. The birthday celebrations. The kids tumbling down stairs in excitement for Christmas. All the laughs and tears. All the great times and all the struggles. All the dreams that were made and broken. Life played out in this house.

How can I stand in this empty house in 509 days and look at everything one last time and not be devastated. I imagine I'll be haunted by the sounds of children laughing and playing that are no longer there. I can look at every mark on the wall, and every chip of missing wood, and I remember how and when it happened.  It will be one of the saddest days of my life.

I have moved five other times in my life. But never have  I lived in one place for so long. Never have I had the kinds of life connections and experiences like I have had in this house. After that last day, this will no longer be my house where my memories are made. It will be someone else's. There will be no more opportunities to do all the things with the house I've wanted to do. There will be no more Christmas pictures of the kids standing on the stairs. No more memories will be created here. Those last few days are going to be very emotional.

Purging T Minus 511 days:Totes for moving

I only had a few minutes to purge, so, I walked around looking for something. I found a tote in the toy room. When I opened it, I found some tools and some wood from my wood shop that were broken up. Apparently my 16 year-old was breaking up wood one day and just never cleaned up after himself. I don't know how long that tote has been sitting in the toy room like that. I emptied the tote and now we have one more empty tote! That is a huge accomplishment because we have 250 totes (yes, you read that right) in total to go through.

I have been buying 18 gallon totes every time they are on sale because I imagined totes would be better for moving than cardboard boxes. Recently, I read that Totes are perfect for storage but are horrible for moving. Apparently, totes will crack and break during moving where a cardboard box won't. I am very disappointed to hear this because I have a huge investments in totes! Regardless, I still plan to pack and move with totes (I just won't buy any more of them!).

511 days sounds like a lot of time, but there is so much that needs to do. I had a life and was very busy before purging became necessary, and now this is an add on. So far, I am hitting the low hanging fruit - all the easy stuff. I dread the days when I am going to have to make really difficult decisions about what goes to Florida and what wont.

Purging T-Minus 512 days: CDROM

I have a cabinet in the basement store room that is filled with CDROMs. The cabinet is filled with game CD's, program CD's, cdroms that come with new computers, audio CDs, and many many backups of computers, documents, videos, and pictures.

I decided to tackle the CD's and I filled an entire garbage bag! I had Windows 98 installation CDROMs and a bunch of Windows 98 games and programs. Old versions of Turbo tax that we buy every year. I had many ten and fifteen year old training CDROMs for my work. There were many music CDs I had created, but in the age of online streaming music, who listens to music CDs?

As I was purging, I came to realize that almost none of our computers have CDROMS anymore. Even if I wanted to use these CD's, I don't have many machines left that I use those CDs on.

Any CDROM that I created went into the garbage. Some of the CDROMs that were created by a manufacturer will go into a "free" bin at the spring yard sale, but most of them also went into the garbage..

Purging T-Minus 513 days: Video Tape Purge

My wife and I grew up in the age of the VHS video tape. We had hundreds... perhaps a thousand VHS video tapes. We displayed them proudly in our living room: three book shelves filled to the brim, double packed on every shelf.

And then came DVD. And Red Box. And online streaming. Today, I can stream almost any movie, and what I can't stream? I can rent for $3.99.

Perhaps ten years ago, we decided the shelves in our living room would be better served with decorations. We threw away hundreds of video tapes containing TV shows we had recorded. The family video tapes (including all of the treasured Disney videos) would stay in the living room. The rest (which was mostly my movies (war, action hero, and scifi) would be relocated to shelves in the toy room.

Fast forward ten years. While some of the videos were watched during those ten years (usually in the home gym while I was working out), most were not. And now... it is time to purge.

We decided that the first round of purge would not touch the family videos in the living room nor any DVD. What we would focus on is the hundreds of tapes in the toy room.

I decided to keep three of my favorite movies, any video tape that I recorded on with our video camera, and the 9-11 videos we recorded from when the world trade center fell. All of the videos that I had recorded TV shows and movies on? Garbage. All the store-bought movies would go to the yard sale, although we doubted anyone would buy a VHS tape. Maybe if we put $.25 on them?

We filled two large garbage bags with video tapes before decided the bags were too heavy and risked breaking, so, we introduced a third bag. There were a couple of movies that I was sad to see go because they were some of my favorites, but I just reminded myself "worse case? It is a $3.99 rental if I want to see it."