It’s been a while since there’s been any mention of the motor home trip to Argentina. The plans are alive and well. Please know the four of us – Santhan, Carol, Michelle, and I are definitely going, and Toni and Philip are eager to caravan with us in their Land Cruiser so long as their house sells.

Now, as you’ve read in previous entries, you know I have a houseful of “stuff,� and emptying my house hasn’t been moving along as fast as I would like and as it must. Mostly I’ve been moaning and groaning about all the possessions that I’ve pulled out from everywhere. Although quite a few things are gone, it looks like there is more than what I started with!

My original idea was to have a moving sale, and yet I wasn’t getting anywhere with that. I bought all the stickers to write prices on, friends were lined up to help me, and yet I just couldn’t seem to get a handle on it.

Finally, after a few months of this, it dawned on me: I don’t want to do a moving sale. I don’t want to spend the time and energy and focus, and I don’t really want a bunch of people traipsing through every room in my house. I don’t want to see people handling my treasures as if they were mere objects, and I don’t want to have to bargain.

I have given quite a bit of stuff away, and I have taken stuff to consignment shops in Iowa City, and yet, it seems that hardly a dent has been made. The consignment shops are kind of a pain too. There’s one where you have to make an appointment to drop things off! And all of them are picky besides, like they’re doing me a favor. Even then, they don’t take all of the great things I take to them! It’s true. Of course, their loss is Good Will’s gain.

It feels urgent that I get as much cleared out of my house as soon as possible, so that I don’t have to keep moving boxes or tripping over them, can have clear space, and so that it will all be behind me. Think how great it will be to have a living-room without mile-high boxes!  (People who don’t have to empty their houses don’t know how easy they have it! Of course, they also don’t know, as I soon will, how wonderful it is to be done with things of the past and to start anew.)

Something my friend Joyce had mentioned finally sank in. There are such things as auction houses! Where had my head been? I found a local auction place in the phone book, and the wonderful owner Royce came out yesterday to see what I had. He loved it all!

And the beauty is that he will come next week to take everything that I don’t need while I’m still here. I can keep my couch, bed etc. until I leave, and then Royce will come back again and take whatever else is left. Could it be easier?

Royce will come with helpers, a truck, and a flat bed, and move everything out that I ask him to. He will even bring boxes and newspapers and pack whatever I haven’t packed yet! He will polish furniture with rose oil! Rose oil! He will take all the stuff away and thank me. He will advertise, — he advertises all over the country. He is taking this whole thing off my shoulders, and all he asks for is 30% of the proceeds. What a discovery! Auctions are definitely the way to go. Thank You, God.