Storage of Stuff

We are continuing our battle against "stuff." I have blogged about our battle with "stuff" since January 2009 and again in February of the same year.

The subject came up again in September 2010 when we decided to get rid of a lot of what we had in storage. Last March we decided to bring everything that was still in storage in Colorado down to Arizona so it would be easier to get to and sort out.

Now, since we have bought a house in Arizona, it was time to pare down even more. In April, we will have an addition built on the house to provide a workshop and storage. The goal is to get rid of enough "stuff" that everything will fit in this house.

We were renting a 10 x 10 storage unit. We have been bringing boxes to the house and/or RV and sorting and throwing. This is what the contents looked like a couple of weeks ago.

We reached the point we could switch to a 5 x 10 unit.

We were happy to see the larger unit EMPTY.

That feels good (and saves us money). Now we have over 5 months to reduce this to what we can store at the house. Wish us luck.

Have you seen the RV reality show "Storage Wars"?  The day we moved to the smaller storage unit, one of the parking aisles was full of cars.  Two or three abandoned, unpaid units were being auctioned off.  But it wasn't like on TV.  We did hear the auctioneer.   But it only lasted a few minutes.  Then everyone left.  No drama there.

A Quick Trip to Colorado

Sunday, right after church, we headed to Colorado. In 77 1/2 hours, we were back at our RV in Mesa--after driving nearly 1700 miles. Sunday, we made it to Albuquerque. In the morning it was on to Colorado. This is a great view of one of the Spanish Peaks near Walsenburg.



We took a short walk in through our old Willow Creek neighborhood.



There was time for a good visit with our grandchildren.





And dinner with the family. Thanks for fitting us in on a busy evening.



Tuesday, we saw Kylie and John off to school



loaded the "stuff" we had in storage in Littleton into a U Haul truck



And drove south in a snow storm! Yuk, Yuk, Yuk.



I drove our truck and followed John in the U Haul.



There was a lot of wind and dust in northern New Mexico.



Finally, the sun came out and the rest of the drive into Albuquerque went smoothly.



By 2:30 this afternoon, we were back here in our RV home in Mesa. We have never covered that many miles in such a short time without getting on an airplane. It went well, but I don't want to do it again any time soon.

Hopefully, next winter we can sort through all these boxes and files and pare down even more. That was our goal in making the move.

3 Down, Many More to Come

Three years ago today, the movers came and packed up our furniture and other "stuff." Then we drove our 5th wheel to Chatfield State Park. We have been living on the road, full-time in our RV, ever since. We love it. We have no plans to end this way of living any time soon.

Since that time, we have volunteered in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, and now Texas. We have traveled around the perimeter of the eastern two-thirds of the country and spent quality time exploring southern Arizona and New Mexico. It is a wonderful life.

We have learned the freedom of getting rid of our "stuff." Granted, it took two more summers to do that, but it really gives us a good feeling. We are happy in something just over 300 square feet of living space, as long as we have a new view out the front window every few days or months. After all, that is our living room most of the time.

New people, new places, new challenges and opportunities. This is the life we love in our retirement. Wave if you pass us on the road. Or send us an email when we are nearby and we will get together to talk about our life on the road.

Happy travels. Remember to keep the rubber side down.

By the way, this is the 500th post on this blog? Who would of thought I would write that many posts?

It's History!

Are we ever glad that September 2011 is history! We did almost nothing but work last month. The first week included the Labor Day Weekend, our last as volunteers at Lathrop State Park and a busy one.

We came to Denver (really Aurora and Littleton) for medical and dental appointments. The first couple of weeks included lab tests, a follow-up visit to my knee surgeon, a colonoscopy for John, physical exams for both of us, dentist appointments for both of us, a return to the doctor so John could have some spots burned off his ears and hand, a visit to a dermatologist to verify he had no skin problems.

Then there was all the time we spent on our "stuff." Last week, we loaded up the items we wanted to keep in our U-Haul storage unit. There really wasn't too much.



However, to get it in, we had to rent a slightly larger storage unit, moving from a 5 ft by 5 ft unit to one 5 ft by 10 ft. This is the smaller unit, after we got everything out.



We moved everything into the hall outside the new unit.



Then we stopped for a bit of lunch.



Here is one end of the storage unit, full of stuff.



The the other half, also full.



Then we had the big load to deal with.



We loaded it into the rental truck. We did it so fast, we think maybe we should hire out as movers.





I swept out the space we rented to do our sorting.



And we drove out with our "stuff," headed for the auction house and our son, Eric's home.



John backed the truck up to the auction house.



With help of one of the staff there, everything was quickly unloaded.



We then made a quick trip to Goodwill with the items the auction house didn't want, then we returned the rental truck. We were done! And exhausted! When we left there, we felt free. Everything we own is in our truck, our RV home and the 5 X 10 storage unit. And the only furniture we own is the two recliners in our 5th wheel.

We did take a couple of hours out last weekend to walk across the road at Chatfield State Park to have dinner with some friends from St. Gabriel's.



Cursillo is a weekend Christian renewal retreat that is conducted in many denominations. John and I made our Cursillo in the mid-1970s and have encouraged others to go ever since then. The three-day retreat is then lived out in the 4th Day, the rest or our lives. At St. Gabriel's, a group of women has been holding a weekly 4th Day Reunion for prayer and mutual support since the mid-1990s. I was a part of the group while John was rector of the church.

The Friday cookout last weekend was a potluck for the women of that group. Four husbands, who have also made their Cursillo, were also invited.



As you can see, we ate well and had a good time.

Dealing With Our Estate

This isn't something new for full-time RVers, but we decided a few months ago that we would really pare down what we had in storage in Denver. We have now been on the road full-time for nearly three years and we know for sure we don't need or want most of what we stored. Last year we got rid of most of the furniture. This year, it was the really hard decisions.

During the last decade or so, we have had to deal with the property my mother and John's father owned. That is so difficult for surviving children. We feel we are doing our children a favor by doing this now. But it is a lot of work.

We had three vaults of belongings in storage. Where do we take it to sort through it? Our site at a state park wouldn't work. There wasn't room in our son Eric's garage. An internet search turned up Le Mouton Business Park in north Denver. They had storage units measuring 16 x 30, plenty of room to sort our stuff. We went to check it out. It is located in an industrial area just west of the National Western Stock Show cattle pens and coliseum.





There is plenty of space for the delivery truck to pull up.



And we could get our truck right up the the door of the unit, even though it was inside.



So we rented the space for a month and had our stuff delivered.

What do we think we will want several years from now, when we decide to come off the road full-time? And even more difficult, what do we have that is important enough to keep for the long term--family photos, ancestral mementos, files and paperwork and memories from our own life? Will we even need or want it? Is it important enough to keep or take somewhere for permanent storage? Are we attached enough we just can't give it up?

We have both bought probably thousands of books over the years. How do we get rid of them? This is just one truckload of books we distributed in the last week. I don't know if it was a donation to the local library or a gift to the church where John used to be the rector. Three years ago, we gave away maybe 30 boxes of books.






I forgot to take pictures the first morning. But here is what it looked like by afternoon. By then, we had sorted it and begun making the tough decisions.



There was furniture (we won't keep any of it, but did give a few things to our son and his family), lots of boxed stained glass windows that John made and large framed art, and many, many boxes.





We even brought some boxes back to the trailer to sort through.



Of course, there was a lot of trash.



On Saturday, we drove a few blocks to have lunch at a neighborhood diner. Since we were in an industrial area, we didn't expect many customers, but they were at least half full at noon.



Sunday, Eric and Liz came to pick up some of the things they wanted--like our everyday dishes, the food mixer, a mattress pad and comforter that go with the bedroom set we gave them last year, and some furniture. We had some fun while they were there.



And we had a nice empty corner when they drove off.



This is a pile of stuff that goes to our storage unit at U-Haul. It grew bigger as the day went on.

De-Stuffing

When we went on the road full-time 19 months ago, we got rid of a lot of our "stuff." But we also kept a lot--way too much, as a matter of fact. So several months ago we decided we needed to do a little de-stuffing. Before we left Lathrop State Park, we went through everything in the RV and, if we hadn't used it in a year, we got rid of it.

In our stick house, we had two rooms full of old family furniture--the dining room and our bedroom. We asked both sons if they wanted the furniture. Doug said no, but Eric said yes. So we de-stuffed by stuffing his house.

Friday we went to the facility where five crates of our "stuff" are stored. See the stacks of wooden crates--called vaults. Hill Moving and Storage knows right where every one is and who it belongs to. So many people have "stuff" they have to store. In addition to the vaults, you can see sofas wrapped and placed on racks up to the ceiling.



Chris, the warehouse manager, had to move about six vaults out of a row before he got to ours. He would drive down the narrow space between two stacks of vaults, bringing out crates one after the other. Finally he started bringing five of them to the front where we could go through them to find the items we wanted to remove.



See that tightly packed wooden box? Tony is just beginning the process of pulling out boxes and furniture so we could find what we wanted. This man is really amazing. He has been doing this kind of work for 20 years and reports he doesn't have back problems. He also said he sleeps well at night.



Here you can see Tony and Jimmy moving something else out of a crate. That stack of flattened cardboard boxes isn't from our "stuff." We didn't even try looking through boxes. But can you believe even our garage sale sign had gone into storage? What were we thinking on January 29, 2009?



One of the crates hadn't been packed correctly. When Tony took off the front panel, everything began to fall. Jimmy is valiantly trying to hold back the avalanche, while hollering for Paul to come help. Tony it reaching for a box to remove it and John is also trying to help.



You know those little stickers they place on your furniture when it goes into a moving van? Each sticker is linked to a line on an inventory sheet. So, as we removed items from storage, Jimmy and Tony had to find the sticker, then check off it's number on another sheet of paper. That way, they can remind us why those items are no longer in storage when we finally decide to clean everything out.



Here John and Tony are surrounded by all the stuff we are taking out of storage. Tony is explaining how our bill will be figured. There is a charge for time while we searched through everything. But we ended up removing half of all we had in storage--saving us $45 each month for each of the two vaults we emptied. That will help. Now that we know we like being full-time RVers, we regret keeping so much stuff. As we looked at what is there, we decided we had been fairly uncertain if we would enjoy this life style when we moved out of the house. So many things we haven't used in a year and a half and don't want now. But sorting and giving away, selling, or whatever is a daunting task. We will put it off for a long time probably--and pay each month for that convenience.

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Here is another view of what we took out. We had even stored the vacuum cleaner!



So, what did we do with all that "stuff" we took out of storage? Well, we stuffed it in our son Eric's house. Granted, he wants all of it.

Saturday morning Paul guided Tony into Eric and Liz's driveway.



There it all is. Can you believe they unloaded all of that in under an hour and took most of it into various rooms of the house? Thank heavens they had to do all the lifting.



Here they are squeezing the dining room table through the front door.



As Paul worked at unwrapping furniture, Tony told us a story.



Among the pieces of bedroom furniture was this stool for the dressing table. Our cat Partner used to sleep on that stool. Since Liz is allergic to cats, our grandson John is using some tape to clean off the cat hair.



Kylie and John couldn't resist the chance to get in the truck with their papa, while Paul and Tony were carrying something into the house.



Here the dresser goes up stairs to the bedroom. Man did those guys work, both Friday and Saturday.



And the hutch is moved into the dining room.



In the end, Eric and Liz had a chance to de-stuff. We had several pieces of furniture we didn't want, nor did Eric and Liz. And they had some furniture they didn't need because they were taking our things. It turns our that over two days Jimmy, Tony and Paul all could used some of that furniture. So they took it away and we had only one small pickup load to take to Goodwill. Here a drop leaf table goes from Eric's house into the truck for Paul.

By 10 a.m., the whole job was done and the only thing left was to pay for all the hard work these three guys and their company had done for us.



We are still a little appalled by all the "stuff" we packed into boxes early last year. But we feel so good about all we gave away this weekend. We are a little lighter, a little freer than we were before. Yea!

We are so grateful for all the hard work and great care from Tony, Jimmy and Paul. And we are so pleased that the furniture we have loved and enjoyed using will now be used by Eric, Liz, Kylie and John.