Finally Free

oldboar · Senior Member

Finally Free

Happywanderer · The Master

Looking forward to meeting you tomorrow. Coffee Pozzie the cafe is called. Only one in town. One street over from the main street opposite J&J Motors (RACQ)

oldboar · Senior Member

Looking forward to it, will give you a bell as we get closer.

Darrell & Sandra

GaryKelly · Guru

Coffee or tea. Yes, life can be difficult at times.

scottynbulldog · Senior Member

We have just started trying to clear 30 years of stuff! It was much easier when we emigrated and were a lot younger!!

beiffe · Guru

I find the decision of "do I move today or not" harder as the coffee is all worked out. Coffee in the morning and tea in the after noon LOL

Regards
Brian

Happywanderer · The Master

Have just spent the last two hours with Darrell and Sandra (Oldboar) and I can say Darrell is not an old bore at all. Had a lovely lunch, thank you, and great conversation discussing all sorts of topics. Lovely couple with lots of interesting experiences.
They are off to Bundaberg in the rain now. Hope it doesn't last too long. Till we meet again friends.

jetj · Guru

Darrell is a great bloke really helpful. I'd love to meet him and Sandra one day.

oldboar · Senior Member

Thoroughly enjoyed it, Marj. Had a good trip through to Bundy & really glad you pointed out the shortcut (really easy run, apart from having to do a U turn due to overshooting the turn-off). Was great to meet you & rest assured it will happen again. Who knows, we might even be able to pry Janette off the coast to a meet at Greens or similar.

Gail, we know how you feel although in our case it was a combined total of 76 years of accumulated stuff spread over two homes three hours apart as we married after both losing our partners.

Cheers to all & look forward to meeting as many as possible

Darrell & Sandra

Happywanderer · The Master

I hope I didn't talk too much Darrell and Sandra. I tend to get a bit excited when I meet up with other grey nomads, especially for the first time.

Grams · Guru

I suffer from insomnia so as its just after 3am I decided to read as many threads on this forum as I could...

We have about 2 years to empty our house of 13 years...I am selling as much as I can, and giving away most of the furniture to the kids, saves having to sell that. I reckon it will take me about this long to do it, plus we have to paint inside and outside, tidy everything up and make the house and gardens look like someone owns it.

My question is...what do you do with the larger portraits of the family, the stuff the kids drew when they started school (I don't have many of these), the momentos that you have had for over 30-50 years....?

I have been going through our huge DVD collection, and sorting out what to sell and what to copy onto an external HD, so we can watch DVDs when there is nothing else to do outside. I have already got rid of all my books, and have heaps of eBooks now....but there is just so much stuff, I often wonder how or why we kept any of it...

beiffe · Guru

If the kids don't want things now they wont want them later.

If the photos are old perhaps try and give them to the local museum or similar as it would be a shame to dump them

I had hundreds of books and could not even give them away, Op shops included so many went to the dump as well as the DVD's etc.

had garage sales but some people want you to give stuff away and you know they are sellers at the market and your stuff will be for sale the next market for good prices when they offer you 20c.

I had one lady want all my wood turning and offered me a few dollars for the lot. Some of the wood cost a fortune with out my time and effort.

Some I was able to give a way and the rest were dumped.

Stuff we thing is important, the kids think of as junk so best to accept it and get rid of it the best you can and dump the rest.

Best not to have STUFF holding you back

Regards
Brian

GaryKelly · Guru

Yep, I agree with Brian, best not to have stuff holding you back. There's a stack of stuff I have to dump as well. One thing that bothered me was my scrapbook - 40 years of memories. It had been gathering dust for many of those years and rarely looked at. So I digitized it and posted it on my web site. Not a silly idea! Lots of peeps from my past have accidentally happened on some of the material and contacted me as a result. So now it's no longer gathering dust, is accessible to anyone who wants to check it out, and I don't have to carry it around with me. Problem solved. As to bulky stuff like books and furniture, it's back to what Brian said, best not to have stuff holding you back.

Grams · Guru

Thank you Brian and Gary,

All our old photos I am scanning and putting on CDs for the kids and myself, as well as the digital photos I have. I have borrowed my parents photos of my sister, brothers and I growing up, so these will be scanned and put on CDs for them. I didn't want my children not having actual photos of themselves and their sibling growing up. I will store the originals somewhere rather than throwing them out.

I haven't managed to sell any of my books, so most are going to the OP shops. The DVDs I am selling well on eBay. All of Les tools are being given to family that would use them. All the furniture has been given away, and sit here with name labels on them, so I remember who they are going to.

Now that we know we are going, I have lost emotional interest in everything we have collected. There is only one thing in the whole house that I will take with me no matter what, and that's our baby sons ashes. Nothing else matters to us anymore.

As for the drawings and stuff the kids did, I never thought of taking digital photos of them. Thanks.

I find it amazing that when you decide to declutter, and you know you are moving into something smaller, nothing you have kept for all those years means anything anymore...which is a good thing of letting go.

Thank you again