Fatigue

I'm exhausted and I've only just begun! Dad took Grandpa to the Seattle airport today. They had to leave around 6 a.m. to get Grandpa there for his 10:55 a.m. flight. It was a direct flight to Dallas on American Airlines. Erin texted me that he'd arrived safely and was in good spirits. Hooray! Later she posted on facebook that she'd gotten him fed and the kids were vying for his attention, and Grandpa seemed to be enjoying himself! Yay!

So, with Grandpa headed for Texas I was able to make some tremendous progress on dejunking his house and beginning preparations for an estate sale. Bless my dear friend Sharon Smith's heart for coming and helping me all day today! We were able to get all of Grandma's books (I hope) out of boxes and categorized and alphabetized and most of them displayed on makeshift box shelves for the sale. There are TONS of books. I'd guess close to or over a thousand. There are also TONS of movies both VHS and DVD, again I'd have to guess around a thousand of them. Those are already in cardboard drawers so we won't have to move them around. I may take the rest of the DVDs which are on shelves in the office into Grandma's bedroom where the rest of the movies are.

I was able to shred quite a few documents. Sharon indicated that Ray may be able to burn any additional documents that need to be disposed of. We saw another box that was labeled financial and tax documents and I'm sure they're old enough to dispose of. It would really help with my time if we could just burn them instead of having to shred them AND it would save some space in the trash. I've already filled two of the big recycle cans and two trash cans along with taking a truck load to the recycling center and I'm not done going through boxes.

I plan on using the various rooms for shopping areas. Movies, bedroom furniture and Grandma's clothes will be in her room. Kitchen items will be displayed in the kitchen and dining room, living room will have furniture for sale, etc.

I will be putting most of the items we don't want to sell in Grandpa's room, other than the items that are too large (like the piano). I'll put a 'sold' sign on those items. I've also been taking items that we need to get rid of from our house over to Grandpa's in the hopes that we'll be able to sell them at the estate sale. We will keep Grandpa's self-propelled lawn mower since ours had the bag stolen from it. We also had another mower that wasn't self-propelled that Grandpa sold to the neighbor last night. Then another neighbor was inquiring about whether we were selling the organ. She might be interested in purchasing it.

Dad's sold his 4 wheeler trailer and has commitments for people to buy the snow plow blade and aerator attachment for it. I sold Grandpa's washer and dryer and have an offer on his freezer. Hopefully we'll be able to get enough items sold to put a big dent in the costs to move down.

Speaking of the costs, we'll be using ABF Trucking to drive our possessions down. I got a quote today from Mayflower and they wanted over $14,000! Whew! We'd have to take out a loan for that! ABF will run anywhere from $3,800 to $5k+ depending on how much space we take in their trailers. I would LOVE it if we only take one trailer and then we'll only have to pay the $3,800. That is a big chunk of change!

Better head to bed. It's almost midnight and Barney's coming in the morning around 8:30 to complete the final repairs (hopefully) on our house for the sale.