The faithful Mini Cooper dressed for Christmas.

After a few months of retirement, I found that I was becoming restless. It wasn’t that I wanted to go to sea again. I don’t. I just wanted to get out of my routine and do the things I hadn’t had time for when I was working. I wondered if I could afford to travel the world. I figured if I did I would have to do it on a budget. With a little googling I found several good websites about budget traveling. One of my favorite is Shannon O’Donnell’s “A Little Adrift”. After reading quite a few of her posts I bought her Kindle book, How Much Does it Cost to Travel the World?: Create an accurate budget for your dream trip.

I took her spreadsheet for her round the world trip and changed it up to plan a whole year of traveling, including three trips back to Hawaii and spending a month each time. What surprised me was that it was cheeper for me to live as a nomad than it would be for me to continue to live in Hawaii.

I thought about renting my place here and heading out, but I decided that when I stop traveling, I don’t want to come back here.  I don’t want to have the responsibility of looking after this place from a distance. So I became determined to sell. In an earlier post I wrote about how I winnowed down the accumulation of a lifetime, to a very manageable level. I thought my place looked rather nice, but when the real estate agent came she looked around and said, “My goodness, this place is cluttered.” We walked around with her pointing out all the stuff that had to go before the place could be shown. It didn’t bother me much because it was going to have to be all gone soon anyway.

Thank goodness I had done the earlier weeding out of my stuff. When I started getting my place ready to show, it was easy to let go of stuff. I was surprised at how much of the stuff I thought I needed to keep, which just wasn’t that important, when it came to paying for storage. Probably the hardest thing left to let go of, was my craft supplies. Though over the years, I have rarely been near my hoard when I needed it, necessitating my going to the store and getting more items to add to the hoard, I had never let any go. I even had added things I never used. Some I had found in a house my mother and I had rented, with the understanding that we could keep them or toss anything that had been left in the house. Since I love to sew, I kept a box full of sewing notions, which I added to my rapidly growing collection of things. Nearly 40 years later, I finally sent that found box off to Salvation Army with my huge collection of sewing notions that I know will be easily replaced if I need them again. I like to think that someone snapped them up and are putting them to good use.

It took me a few weeks, to get the place ready to show. I had the help of my friends. One friend is a used-book dealer, he came and took the books I was able to part with. I only packed away books that cannot be replaced. Another dear friend came and took the huge bookcases, which she had always loved. They look great in her house. I gave the contents of my liquor cabinet to my union to use a future social events. Things I needed or really wanted to keep went into a storage unit a few blocks way from my condo. Since I no longer have a car, I bought a sturdy hand truck and hauled load after load down the street, garnering many strange looks. When I was left with only what would sustain me while my place is on the market, I arranged for a nice young man with a truck to take a huge bunch of stuff to the Salvation Army. While the stack of boxes were sitting in my living room another nice young man came over and took my jewelry away to be sold on Ebay. I have received several checks from him, in excess of what I was expecting, and the still has things to sell.

All packed up and ready to be taken to the Salvation Army. (I kept the stool at the last minute.)

Anybody who has visited my place, knows what a huge change this is.

Now all I have to do is wait to find that person who will love the place as much as I have. When it sells another nice young man will come over and take the furniture on consignment. Anything left will go to The Salvation Army. My bag is packed, and I am ready to go.