Apr 4, 2017

Carry That Weight!

LeeAnn just left for the consignment store with her second van load of stuff!



Carrying a heavy box of books up the basement stairs, I considered the weight. Wondered about the mental weight of these books. How heavy do they weigh on my sub-conscious? And how good will it feel when they are gone? One less thing to take care of. One less worry.



My nightstand left in this trip. I replaced it with a stool that had been sitting idle on the storage side of our basement. It feels so good to replace something I wasn't using, with something I wasn't using.


We also sent off a table with the map of the world on it. I thought "I'm giving up a map of the world, so I can do see the world."


I sold a broken outboard motor last week, reducing my outboard motor collection by 1/3. I listed the whitewater kayak I no longer use on Craigslist, and believe that will also be sold today.

So far our kids are handling this well. Charlie is oblivious, and Hobie hasn't seemed to notice things slowly disappearing. We have been talking with him about selling our things and moving onto the boat more and more. We want to give him plenty of time to feel this out, ask questions, and be comfortable.

2 comments:

  1. re: books... I don't own a television so I read A LOT. But actual books, as you know by carrying them up the stairs are a pain. All my books are on my iPad. Hundreds of them. There are several reasons for it, not the least is the whole size and weight issue. Space, as you know, is as a premium on a small boat, and where would you keep all the damned things, anyway?

    Another reason my books are on my iPad is that for the last eight years I've been living in a small town in western Panama. Try finding English language books in a Spanish speaking country. There are two sources of dead tree books here, one is a used book store in Dolega, a three-hour round-trip bus ride from my home if I make good connections. Add in browsing time and I've spent a whole day trying to buy a book. The other place is at the gringo market day in Boquete which is a FOUR HOUR round trip. Sure I'm retired and my time's my own, but gee ZUS I'm not going to do that!!

    There are tons of free classics on Gutenberg Project and Amazon has THOUSANDS of free books to download, and inexpensive ones, too. But I'm NOT going to pay $14.95 to download a James Patterson piece of trash.

    I also have aa subscription to Audible.com and download and have someone read great books to me in lieu of having a television.

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  2. Hi Richard!

    Living in Panama sounds awesome! How long have you been there? What's the cost of living like?

    I have Audible too (and love it!), but I'm probably going to cancel it to cut costs as we reduce income and move aboard.

    Our local library just partnered with Hoopla, so now my wife and I both get 6 rentals a month each, which can be e-books, audiobooks, tv shows, or movies. We can download the content so no internet connection is required. It's pretty sweet and will make cancelling both Audible and Netflix a LOT easier.

    On previous sailing trips we had really good luck picking up books at book exchanges, particularly at laundromats in popular cruising areas.

    I've never heard of the Gutenberg Project or looked for free books on Amazon. I'll have to check that out! Thanks for the tip!

    Chad

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