Cleaning, Culling, & Packing ~ The Saga Continues

Another busy day, even though the actual physical work did not start until well after 12 noon.

Tuesday started off as an typical Tuesday ~ I brought Ariana to school in Fall River.

I was in desperate need of a shower. However, I did not have enough time in the morning to take a shower and get changed into normal day time clothes.

So off I went in in my polar bear flannel PJ bottoms, a zip-up hoodie, and greasy hair.

After dropping off Ariana at Bristol Community College, I stopped at BJ's Wholesale Club on the way back to gas up my car. After all, BJ's had one of the lowest gas prices in the area.

This time it was down to $1.69 & 9/10ths. Yowzah!

Because I wasn't exactly dressed for gallivanting around town, I briefly debated with myself as to whether I should go straight home after getting gas or whether I should brave the shame and scrutiny of my derelict appearance while completing my errands.

Completing my errands won out.

After gassing up, my first stop was Staples, where I once again redeemed 3 more spent printer cartridges for recycling. That full bag of cartridges in my back seat is getting smaller and smaller.

Next errand was a stop at the bank to deposit a small check.

I was nearly in the home stretch when I decided to stop at The Wanderer office so that I could place an ad for our up-coming gigunda moving sale.

Because I had a wall full of Neil's collection of vintage fantasy, sci-fi, and action/adventure novels, along with a ton of role-playing gaming goodies, that one ad became 2 ads. And all that for the great bargain price of $12.00.

I mentioned to the lady at The Wanderer that I also had some exercise equipment to sell. She suggested that I get those ads in quickly, especially since Christmas is just around the corner. (Yikes!)

With that on my mind, I finally trekked home.

As soon as I got home, I heard the slow and irritating "beep...beep...beep..." of the answering machine, indicating that there was a message on the machine.

The message was from Father Stan at church. He wanted to go over this coming Sunday's Advent Bible study lesson.

Normally, I would return any call right away. But I was really desperate to hop into the shower.

And after showering and getting changed, I wanted to start on the laundry.

You see, while on the way to BCC, Ariana mentioned that she had 8 more bags of clothes that needed to be washed, but that she got distracted from bringing them downstairs when 'Miah visited yesterday.

Those 8 bags actually turned out to be 10.

They were all up in the chill room. And rather than go up and down the stairs, schlepping all those bags, I just pitched them overboard, down the stairs, and just made that one trip down the stairs.

2 bags made one load of laundry. So I was looking at doing 5 loads of laundry and then sorting all the clean clothes for Ariana to go through and make her decisions.

With the first load going, and another cup of coffee underway, I made my call to Father Stan.

However, this time was not a convenient time for Father Stan. He said that he would need to call me back later in the day.

In getting a slight reprieve from going over lesson plans, I decided to work on the ads for Neil's exercise equipment.

First thing I did was tally up the weight of Neil's free weights and dumbbells. Nearly half a ton of weight!

Wow! That's some serious iron!

I wrote up 3 ads ~ for the weight equipment, the trampoline, and the stepper/climber.

Then I drove down to The Wanderer office to place those ads, only to find out that the office had already closed for the day. It will not re-open until Thursday.

So, then I went on-line, and placed 5 ads in the Standard-Times classifieds.

Gee! What I paid for 2 ads in The Wanderer did not even buy me one ad in the Standard-Times.

I wound up spending, so far, a total of $140 in classified ads. Hopefully, I will make many times that amount with the sale of Neil's exercise equipment and the proceeds from the gigunda yard sale.

After placing the ads in the Standard-Times, I went on-line to place the 3 exercise equipment ads in The Wanderer.

However, the cyber fairies had other things in mind.

I could not get to place an ads in The Wanderer because I kept getting the message that my browser would not support that function without the most recent Java plug-in.

OK.

As far as I know, I do have Java on my computer. But just to be sure, I down-loaded the most recent Java plug-in.

Still no dice.

Then, I tried another tactic ~ down-loading the newest version of Internet Explorer.

And that didn't work either.

I guess I will have to wait until Thursday to go down to The Wanderer office and place those 3 ads in person.

After all that, I decided that it was time for some physical labor.

I cleaned off the tops of the drafting table and light table, and then pushed them to the wall in order to create more floor space.

I placed the things I would need and the things I would not want to sell in the corner, behind my computer.

I swept up the floor.

I placed some stuff on the shelves.

Then I went upstairs and brought down an upright plastic storage unit with drawers and on wheels.

Even with that, there were still quite a bit of floor space left.

So I decided to get ambitious and bring down the 2 tables that were once used by my in-laws' engineering office.

Good thing that I had long ago cut the legs down from those tables. Otherwise it would have been a royal bitch of a time trying to navigate the table frames down the stairs.

Dragging down the table frames was easy because they were rather light in weight.

The table tops were a different story. They must have weighed twice the weight of the frames. And they were far more cumbersome to maneuver down the stairs.

All the while, I was praying that my call from Father Stan would not come while I was in the midst of negotiating those cumbersome table tops down the stairs.

God listened.

With both tables brought downstairs, dusted off, and stacked one on top of the other, I decided to declare a moratorium on heavy physical labor for the rest of the day.

The only work to be done after that monumental task would be to feed the dogs and continue with the laundry.

As a matter of fact, the last load went into the wash half an hour ago.

Already Ariana's clean clothes have been sorted into tall piles. And I have not yet finished with all the laundry.

How tall will those piles get?

And honestly, what person needs 80 pairs of pants?

That kid of mine is going to have go through a lot of clothing tomorrow.

And I have a strong sneaking suspicion that I will need to bring down the second heavy-duty garment rack, because I feel there will be lots more clothes destined for the gigunda moving sale.