Life has been in a bit of a turmoil, but good turmoil, for a while now. I spent several months sorting through my belongings in preparation for downsizing from an 1800 sq. foot home into an RV and having an estate sale to eliminate what I am not taking with me.
I joined Paul in the RV on the 23rd of April, and my estate sale was held May 16-19th. The weather that has been miserably cold and rainy was, for the most part, warm and sunny that weekend….except for a tornado warning the last couple hours of the sale. The sale was a success, and the company I had conducting the sale for me is getting the home cleaned out so the real estate company and finalize steps needed to list it for sale.
Preparing to put my home up for sale created a whirlwind of things to be handled. As it turned out, the home needed a new roof, which has been completed. I hired someone to mow the lawns, and despite the mush the rain has created in spots, he managed to complete the task at least twice. I have someone hired to clean out flower beds and shrubbery, but the weather has prevented that from being completed thus far. Some inside drywall repair and painting, carpet cleaning, and power washing the outside of the home and it should be ready to go on the market. Hopefully it will be a quick sale. 
Moving into a 35-foot RV creates challenges when trying to finding places for everything. The kitchen, bathrooms and bedroom are pretty well organized now. I still have lots of boxes to go through and where to put items. The problem is, being a writer, a good portion of those boxes contain paperwork, and I am not sure if they will all be able to stay. Other items end up in unusual places. My bottles of wine are under the bed, shoes are in a drawer, and at this point the driver’s seat is holding a chess board, backgammon board, and some paperwork. The number of boxes that have been emptied is impressive.
One of the greatest challenges is realizing that there is not the pantry, refrigerator, or freezer space I was accustomed to having in my home. One weeks worth of groceries for two people creates a full refrigerator. Our pantry is full. Convection oven cooking is not difficult, just an adjustment. Living is a bit more simplified. There isn’t room for clutter.
My Memorial Day weekend is a time for more sorting and organizing. Whatever you do this weekend I hope it is fun and enjoyable.
In trying to clean things out and prepare for a yard sale this weekend when walking through my home it is difficult to determine if things are better or worse then they were a week, month, or year ago. I’m in that messy time when things appear worse even though they are getting better.
I’m bringing things up from the basement and pricing them for garage sale, then stacking the boxes under a table in my TV room. I am preparing to put a desk into the garage sale and bring a different desk into it’s spot. To do that I had to empty out other furniture and items in the landing and the scrapbooking room itself to allow space for the exchange to take place.
--- LIFE IS A MELTING POT --- Grace Grogan...Writer, Photographer 