Really Sad

This morning I took all of my engineering textbooks and the business texts from my MBA studies to the Goodwill donation station. It really hurt me to part with those books. I spent so much time with them. The books were very heavy. I had them stored in a cabinet in the room I call the den which is on the second floor. It took many trips up and down the stairs to carry them to my car in the garage. For a while I thought I was going to have another bruise on my arm, but fortunately one did not develop. The bruise I got last weekend is fading. By next week it will just be a bad memory.

 

After I came back home, I cleaned every drawer in my desk. I had a couple of stacks of current papers that I am now able to fit in the drawers. I now am able to store my new camera equipment in the cabinet where I kept the college textbooks. There is a bright side to all of this sorrow associated with parting with my possessions. By the time my house is put on the market, I will have cleared out enough to make it look very spacious. It did not look cluttered before I started the sorting. I am very neat, but every shelf and every drawer was full of things that I have accumulated over the years and now rarely touch.

 

It was really funny how many pens and pencils had accumulated in my desk drawers. Many came from meetings and conferences that I attended while I was working. One drawer was full of souvenirs of vacations and cruises I had taken 20-30 years ago. I have done so much traveling since I retired. I accumulated an incredible amount of stuff from the travel and reached the point that I just had to throw it out. Now the only souvenirs that I keep are the pictures that I have taken. I have twenty large albums that are filled with pictures of trips that I have taken since I retired. I am keeping those albums.

 

After next week's trip to Frisco, I am going to call the Salvation Army and have them come pick up some of the bigger items. I am going to get rid of my exercise bicycle, old computer, lawn mower and wheel barrow. I may also get rid of the shelves in the garage. I am curious if Del Webb will have an option for built-in storage cabinets in the garage. I am going to keep my upgrades to a minimum. Plantation shutters on all the windows and storage cabinets in the garage are the two upgrades that I most desire.