How do we get rid of all that Stuff?

We Americans like stuff!  We collect it, hoard it, accumulate it, and store it.  We haul boxes of it from house to house over the years, and we forget we even had it ... but we don't get rid of it!  Lynda and I are true Americans ... we had our share!

We knew getting rid of it would not be easy.  Some of it was even useful and nice, so we decided to get a Pod to store the really good stuff in.  After all we might not like being vagabonds and gypsies forever, and it would be really expensive to replace all of it.  So we stuffed the Pod like the Grinch stuffed his sled and sent it off to storage ... really ... we only kept the good stuff!

The rest of the accumulation had to go!  We pawned off as much as we could on the kids ... unfortunately they are not as young and unaware as they used to be ... so they didn't take very much, and the rest we put in the garage for a garage sale (our first!).

Our two sons came over to help us sell the excess.  Garage Sales are a cultural experience.  A real slice of Americana walked up driveway.  Our son Shane kept telling us not to throw away things that were clearly trash ... he insisted that someone would buy it ... he was right!  They bought old ant spray,  assorted electrical cords  that no longer went to anything, broken toys, and old batteries.  They passed on fine china, expensive suits, and dress shirts.  They purchased old bags from conferences gone by but turned up their noses at expensive luggage.  One person's trash is truly another person's treasure.  After everything was said and done here was the result:

We donated the rest to the senior center (two loads fulls) and are now ready to hit the road full-time!

One of the things we noticed when going through our stuff was how often we asked each other how we had managed to accumulate so many absolutely unnecessary and overindulgent things.  We have never thought of ourselves as particularly materialistic ... and still don't ... but ... the process of de-stuffing was a philosophical journey that was worth taking.