What is That in the Attic?
Traditionally the day after Thanksgiving is when my family pulls down the Christmas decorations from the attic and puts up the tree. My kids have fun placing their favorite ornaments on and the holiday spirit flows through the house. While I’m up in the attic, I look around and wonder what all this stuff is. The attic isn’t really very crowded but there are boxes of things that I have no idea what is stored in them. So this year I created a new tradition. Each time I go into the attic, I pull down a box and see if it really needs to be stored for another year. Read more »
Posted: December 1st, 2008 under Possesions.
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I mentioned in an earlier post about clearing the clutter in my garage in three sections. I’d finished the first section a few months ago and this weekend I finally tackled the second section. This area included my workbench and the shelving behind it. Every horizontal surface was covered in stuff. It just became easier to toss things on the workbench instead of putting them away, because there was no space. So Saturday morning, even though it was 37 degrees out, I took everything off the bench, under the bench, on the shelves, and put in on the garage floor. From there it became my task to put it back in such a way as to be able access everything. My first thought when I finished putting everything on the garage floor? “I’m doomed.” 
I haven’t had a watch in years. My last one died and when I replaced the battery, it refused to start up again, so I put it in the drawer with a few other watches that don’t work. Why I have a drawer with dead watches is a discussion for another day. Once I started carrying a cell phone (much later than everyone else) I started using its clock otherwise, getting the time if I needed it was not difficult. I might add, this is one of the side benefits of being on-time most of the time. So while we were on the cruise, we browsed through the stores on the ship and I saw some pretty nice watches. I then realized that I wanted a nice watch. This wasn’t one of those “mind transforms a want to a need” times when I suddenly saw something I didn’t know I wanted and I had to have it. Instead, it was a fundamental change in my thinking, a very different feeling for me. 
Note: I’ll be on vacation next week, so no new posts until Oct 20th. It might be a good time to read some posts that you missed. Now, on with the post.
So Saturday was the big neighborhood garage sale and we had a ton of baby clothes, sheets, and toys to sell. These things are always big sellers on garage sale day, so I looked forward to getting rid of stuff we didn’t use and make a little cash along the way. This is the only garage sale we have each year because of the sheer magnitude of it. Literally thousands of people come on this weekend. The traffic is horrible with our normal street turning into an unmarked one-way due to the number of cars there. The fact that we are basically trapped in our neighborhood that morning helps to motivate us to actually have a garage sale. After all, if thousands of people are going to be walking by, might as well see if they want our stuff.