Summer                                                          New (Most Heat) Moon

Many, many red tape boxes are gone. Six bookshelves are gone. An old entertainment center is gone. The credenza, the armoire, the bedside pieces and the large table sized chin-hua are gone. The white chest of drawers and a bookshelf and another tall, narrow shelving unit is gone. All the old wood from the renovation and the dog stalls are gone. Many fragile, no longer wanted, pieces of crystal, stemware and place settings are gone. An industrial size plastic trash bin full of old papers and travel brochures. Gone.

I’m just up from an hour and a half nap. Kate’s still asleep. At a guess we’ve probably moved out half of the things we don’t want to move. I’ve still got a lot of bookshelves to go through and there will be bookshelves and discarded books to go after I’m done, probably sometime in August. The old electronics, a couple of desks, some garden tools, some bee-keeping stuff, tools will go then, too. We still have a few items to sell: the hydroponic set-up, the lawn tractor and its attachments, the long-arm quilter.

Once those are sold and the remaining decluttering items are out of the house, we’ll begin considering storage for items that will go with us.  Some of the remaining furniture will need to be out of the house when we put it on the market next March.

We’ve also begun contracting for smaller work around the house, handyman type things to make the whole place neater and yard work, pruning and maybe some planting. In the winter we’ll have some rooms repainted and the house professionally cleaned. Then, the photographer will come and we’ll begin process of selling the big item. This house.

Summer                                                          New (Most Heat) Moon

Excited this morning. The move gets real today. The movers and packers from Sort Toss Pack show up at 10 am. They’ll move the wood from the garage, freeing up space there, then the red tape boxes from the basement and upstairs. After that load, the movers will take all the green tape boxes to the garage. Meanwhile the packers will be at work, getting stuff that is fragile ready for their trip to the consignment shop.

Kate’s gone through the upstairs like a beneficent locust, sweeping everything before her into boxes or onto the kitchen table for packing. In my turn I’ve sorted out six bookshelves full of books and some DVD’s, only six more standing bookshelves and the ikea bookshelves in the study to go. I’ll be done by the end of August if not before.

After they’ve moved all the books and the scrap wood, the movers will come back and take all of our bedroom furniture except the bed, plus the six empty bookshelves, an empty entertainment center, a chest of drawers and some smaller furniture.

Our house will feel much emptier after today and that’s a good thing. We’re not there yet, not by a long ways, but we’ve made a good start. A very good start. Next week we get the third market analysis and then we’ll choose a realtor from the three we have interviewed. The week after that Jon and Ruth come. Jon will build the deck and Kate will ride back with them to Colorado to meet realtors there and get an on the ground feel for the real estate market out there.