Boris is starting to whisper to me again. That’s right, my Muse is back, and, boy, have I missed him. I have not written since February. This year we’ve wrangled a major decluttering project that led to a huge garage sale. We sanded, painted, (well, Rich did) cleaned and staged our house in preparation for listing it, lived with the nightmare of keeping our house spotless for showings, sold it, house-hunted in another city, moved, unpacked and settled in. I was in the process of reading my manuscript and marking up revisions during this craziness, but eventually I Read More
Tag: garage sale
Decluttering Part II: The Garage Sale
The natural culmination of marathon decluttering is The Garage Sale. For some these words bring anticipation of a sunny Saturday afternoon rummaging through someone else’s castoffs and finding an ugly painting that will sell for $10,000 on Antiques Roadshow. For others (like me) it sends shivers down one’s spine. But when you’ve been as successful as we had in rooting through every item in your home and brutally tossing aside treasures you could never part with (none of which will fetch $10,000 BTW) into the “sale” pile, a garage sale is a must. Now, I don’t go to garage sales because they put me into sensory overload. When Read More
Decluttering – the Incredible Lightness of Being
Over drinks last Friday I confessed to my two dear friends, H.J. and Carol, that I had thrown away their family-picture Christmas cards. All of them. All that I had saved over the years documenting their family trips, maturing children, new grandbabies, growing grandchildren, etc. That’s right, I had saved their cards for years—heck, for generations—and not just theirs, many other friends’ and family members’ as well. They assured me I had not committed a mortal sin and they had their own copies so I should rid myself of guilt and carry on. I admit it; I’m a pack rat. Perhaps because my large Irish-Catholic family had so Read More