Roll Call
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Ah, so sorry @approxinfinity awful news.
Yep, sounds eerily familiar. Best to you and your family. not easy.
My advice (if you haven't been thru this before): get everything in order that you can get in order. -
@rockchalkjayhawk downsize downsize downsize! In the end i want the sum of my material belongings to be lighter than air, at least the ones no one else wants.
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@approxinfinity said in Roll Call:
@rockchalkjayhawk downsize downsize downsize! In the end i want the sum of my material belongings to be lighter than air, at least the ones no one else wants.
So funny you’d say that about downsizing! I’m in that mode now.
Sadly It all started after mom passed away. We started by donating a zillion boxes of her stuff to Goodwill. Then we decided to paint the inside of our house. You know how that turns into chaos with stuff everywhere in giant piles.
Time to downsize! We realized (or I did) that we had two massive bookshelves just collecting dust. GONE! The books and shelves. I read on a Kindle now anyway.
Anyway, a work in progress, but it’s a very good feeling to declutter, and to donate to those who need these things more than I do.
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Mike's mother gave us back all the gifts we had given her throughout the years before she passed. When Mike's dad lived with a heart condition for 20 years, she would never tell us when he was experiencing setbacks and when Mike would ask why, she said you make your life day to day and you can't make up lost time on a deathbed. He and his father (retired air force) didn't get along when he turned 18 and went to college in 1969. He was not the military type and I think his dad resented that he wasn't. When we got married, they did repair some of the issues, but it took the energy to make that call. His dad was able to fly down here after we built the house and had the girls and he was impressed with what Mike had become and he told Mike that. Both were at peace. It boiled down to thinking you know what and who someone is without really knowing them for who they are, not what you wanted.
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@rockchalkjayhawk I realized just how much crap I have after my brother passed away. Had to deal with all his stuff. A lot ended up at goodwill or the trash. There were some things that could be sold but that was a lot of work so the really cheap stuff got donated and much of the rest ended up at places that resell it. Obviously didn't get full value but the time and effort is worth more than the difference was to me. That did get me selling off some of my own stuff. Mainly giant book lots on eBay but I did pare back my DVDs and such a teensy bit.
Absolutely do not click (new video sept 30 2025): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjs1LR1sarQ
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Good luck to everyone dealing with so many challenges. We are dealing with our own accumulated junk: We are getting ready to move and it has been chaotic trying to get the house ready to list on June 15th. Realtor's photographer coming next Saturday. Spent yesterday with her taking everything we love off the walls, evicting chairs and tables, and basically mutating the place into a vacuous HGTV showpiece. I understand it, but geez it is annoying!
Moving from our rainy coastal-SC cozy house to the deserts of the west, most likely Sun City in Las Vegas. The developers around here are putting up about 8,000 new homes within 5 miles or so, plus a new Buckees at the I-95 exit that already is backed up for half a mile every morning with workers going to Hilton Head. Gonna be a mess.... We would be a lot closer to the kids in Hawaii, and we have always dreamed of long trips through the west. Grand Canyon is my favorite spot on earth, and Her Loveliness has a lifelong desire to see the redwoods and other nat'l parks. In LV, maybe we will also get to see a yearly Chiefs game! And our sons will come for hockey.
Just have to avoid that seductive spinning wheel with all those numbers and we should be ok!
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@rockchalkjayhawk I realized just how much crap I have after my brother passed away. Had to deal with all his stuff. A lot ended up at goodwill or the trash. There were some things that could be sold but that was a lot of work so the really cheap stuff got donated and much of the rest ended up at places that resell it. Obviously didn't get full value but the time and effort is worth more than the difference was to me. That did get me selling off some of my own stuff. Mainly giant book lots on eBay but I did pare back my DVDs and such a teensy bit.
Yea, not a great feeling having to deal with a loved one’s stuff, but it feels good in the end.
When I cleared out my mom’s home a few years back when she moved up toward us, wow, that was a ton of work. I mostly packed up the car, dropped stuff off at Good Will down the street, then rinse and repeat all day long.
I also sold a lot of things as well — using an App called Offer Up. Worked great down in LA, but when I tried to use it to sell off a lot of our things up here in the Bay Area … crickets! So I mostly donated everything.
So same deal, I didn’t get what I could have, but I have less stuff and a cleaner house!
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Good luck to everyone dealing with so many challenges. We are dealing with our own accumulated junk: We are getting ready to move and it has been chaotic trying to get the house ready to list on June 15th. Realtor's photographer coming next Saturday. Spent yesterday with her taking everything we love off the walls, evicting chairs and tables, and basically mutating the place into a vacuous HGTV showpiece. I understand it, but geez it is annoying!
Moving from our rainy coastal-SC cozy house to the deserts of the west, most likely Sun City in Las Vegas. The developers around here are putting up about 8,000 new homes within 5 miles or so, plus a new Buckees at the I-95 exit that already is backed up for half a mile every morning with workers going to Hilton Head. Gonna be a mess.... We would be a lot closer to the kids in Hawaii, and we have always dreamed of long trips through the west. Grand Canyon is my favorite spot on earth, and Her Loveliness has a lifelong desire to see the redwoods and other nat'l parks. In LV, maybe we will also get to see a yearly Chiefs game! And our sons will come for hockey.
Just have to avoid that seductive spinning wheel with all those numbers and we should be ok!
I have a buddy who lives down near you on John’s Island. Beautiful coastal community. That, to me, would be hard to leave!
I spent a drunken summer working on Hilton Head during college years at KU. Had a blast!
So if you move to Vegas, you’d be exchanging sweltering humidity for a dry heat
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@rockchalkjayhawk yeah that stuff is all regional. Facebook marketplace is pretty active here but 90% or more of the messages are from idiots/time wasters.
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@rockchalkjayhawk yeah that stuff is all regional. Facebook marketplace is pretty active here but 90% or more of the messages are from idiots/time wasters.
Average Facebook Marketplace msg: “Hi, I’d like to pay $2 for your 2026 Lamborghini, but you’ll need to deliver it to me.”
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My neighbor's son is a pastor at a church in Marble Falls. I had a full rack of Mike's clothes that I donated to a community service organization that supplies recently released prisoners and others down on their luck to have a wardrobe for interviews. Some even still had the sales tags attached as they were things his Mom would send for birthdays and he never wore them. I felt that it was the best use and lo and behold one day after doing lab work in Marble Falls last fall I stopped at the local Blue Bonnet Cafe and saw a guy wearing one of his shirts. It could have been that the guy bought it at the store but I just knew it was one that I had donated. Now, most of his hunting gear I did try to sell at the local church garage sale and I couldn't believe that people would want to bicker over a brand new pair of insulated pants that still had the price tag on them would only offer $15 for a $85 a pair. I brought most of the items home. Rather, I gave them to his hunting buddies up in Kansas and Michigan, where they really needed the stuff. It was amazing to me how many people wanted to just be given things after he passed. His nephews drove down from Emporia one Memorial Day weekend a couple of years back with their truck and took home most of the tools and equipment that was just sitting in the She Shed. Cleared out about 6 cabinets worth of nail guns, saws, table saw, etc. They have a classic auto shop there in Emporia and Mike used to work there when their dad, Mike's sister's husband, operated it. They to this day don't ever forget to thank me when they use a tool they got and tell me how it helped in a restoration project. They got Mike's dad's 1973 El Camino and restored it. It's beautiful. Mike was supposed to get it after his dad passed but he never went to get it. We would always take it out for a ride when we went to his Mom's. I still have in the She Shed a 1973 Bronco (that he refitted into a rock crawler) and an original 1974 Bronco that is painted UT Orange. Everytime some guy sees them, they go gaga.
#RCJH GO KU
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That’s a nice story — seeing his shirt put to good use
And those Broncos sound awesome! Love that era. Although I could probably do without that shade of orange…ha.
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@rockchalkjayhawk I want to puke every time I see it. Funny story about it tho. Mike saw the 74 Bronco parked at a local building supply company and waited around for the owner to show up and when they didn't, he put a note on the car's windshield saying "If you ever want to sell it, give me a call." Couple of years later, he got the call and the guy had lost his wife and was doing down sizing and decided to sell it. We had so much fun running around in it and always got HORNS UP every time we were in it.
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@RockChalkinTexas-0 Sounds like "she shed" needs to be renamed "warehouse"! I'm very impressed by all the things you've done to keep Mike's spirit alive for yourself and the girls. So many legacies. Not many people do things for released prisoners who need so much help to start fresh.... When I go, all that will be left are a few dusty legal opinions no one will read. Well, that and a thousand plumbing, electrical, and drywall repairs in our series of fixer-uppers that no one will even notice...AND hundreds of posts here on Buckets, of course!
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@mayjay I call it my own Home Depot. The building is 40' x 60' and there is a section for each: electrical, paint, automotive, air gun nails and staples of every kind, along with a section for his woodworking stuff and 4 different shelves with 5 levels in each that he welded to hold all the lumber. It has a loft which houses all the parts he took off the 73 Bronco and cabinets he built all around it. Has a bathroom and an office. It still has way too much crap in it. He built a warehouse and office space for his friend's landscaping company and the leftover cedar stumps and columns he used to make a bench in his office and an L shaped desk in addition to the paneling and cabinets he built for the office. I know because after he passed, I went through everything to find out just what was in there. I didn't realize he had so much stuff in there. I put a $15K HVAC unit in there to keep the stuff from getting baked. He would open the big garage doors on 3 ends and do his work outside mostly. But I didn't want to have to have the doors open just to be in there, and I didn't want any snakes or other things getting in there, so to keep the stuff from turning to crap, I did that the year after he passed. It has been worth it.
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I found some pictures and scanned them. This is the 73 Bronco before and after:
