Tuesday Trippin’ May 30

Russ went to a college graduation in Colorado for Mother’s Day. I’m mentioning it now because it happened since our last update also because it kept on giving, that part to follow. At the same time I went to visit my for her day. She’s in a nursing home in south Alabama in rehab because of a fall resulting in a fractured hip.

We planned to “hit the ground running” when we got back so we could get this long postponed yard sale finally behind us. It was the “Please don’t let us have to postpone the date yet AGAIN” date. But, we don’t have the ability to display our mass quantities of treasure in bad weather, so, alas, when Saturday afternoon of the sale weekend moved up above 60% chance of rain, we did indeed cancel.

The irony? The weather would have been manageable, but Russ got Covid AGAIN! His realizing he needed to test and the positive test result came just after we would have dragged everything out to the yard. So, we are actually truly thankful for the cancellation, and equally frustrated that it was needed.

Russ felt pretty bad about getting on multiple airplanes and ending up with Covid, but in truth, a nursing home in south Alabama is also a pretty good place to contract a highly communicable disease. We’re evenly matched for risky exposure levels I think.. I never tested positive, but I felt pretty icky for a bit just before he did. We’ll never know, but it’s possible my test was a false negative or that I ended up being some kind of carrier and he actually got it from me. The whole point being that there is no point in anyone feeling bad about having to isolate, cancel and avoid every one and everything AGAIN.

Russ moved into a room upstairs and onto an air mattress, one that sprung a leak and completely emptied in his sleep on his last night of isolation. I isolated from the rest of the family too because Russ and I had such close contact before his positive. We shared some meals outside together watching Ted Lasso or Endeavor. That was actually pretty pleasant, except for some wind that made the trees sway big time, and some rain that made us run to bring the tablet inside.

If we had to have yet another few things to cope with, It turned out as well as it could have. And now we are ready, truly ready, to have that sale this weekend.

Tuesday Trippin’ May 9

Sometimes I think about my grandfather when I write these updates. He was a farmer and cattleman, at least part time. He was also a wholesale grocer, a city councilman and a Baptist deacon. Visiting with his friends at City Cafe, talking about the weather was his daily networking mode.

I, on the other hand, wondered how the weather could be part of every single greeting. Just look at the sky and talk about something else I thought, right? For so many years, my attention to the weather came by way of opening the front door, and maybe coming back for a jacket if I needed one. You can get away with that maybe part more easily in South Alabama if you not going to be out in the weather for long.

But then with the ballooning, and now the distance cycling, complete accurate forecasts that are far better than my grandfather ever hoped for are pretty important to me too. I remember to check wind and potential downdrafts better when there’s a potential Lighter than Air flight because that’s so important to staying aloft.

Somedays on my bike it’s pretty windy and after one of those days feeling unsteady in the gusts and watching tall trees sway, I’ll remember to check wind speeds for riding for a while. Sometimes writing these posts and talking about the weather feels like a trip to the City Cafe with PaPa, except for all the ways it’s completely different.

So, What About That Weather?

The pollen hasn’t been so bad this year. I haven’t felt the need for a neck gaiter to pull up over my nose to keep the yellow out. Rain has been well timed for washing it away. The riding is constant, but with weather breaks. We’ve had another week with as much time on the trail as on the project. April enough warm weather that I was afraid the really warm temps would start in May, but we’re good.

See you on the trail, and have a glorious day!

Sale!

Come to our Vintage and Kitsch Sale at 460 Laurian View Court 30075, June 2 & 3 from 9-4! We’ll also have some household items, power tools, plants, and general miscellaneous. I’ll have “free items” section and restock it periodically too.

Here are the 5 Ws about this sale, plus some!

Who ?

Karen and Russ have a vintage and more Etsy Shop called Six Degrees and the basement stock rooms have gotten out of control. We’re having a stock reduction sale for anyone who wants vintage, kitsch or antiques, most of it at about a 75% (or more) discount from what it would cost to order online.

What ?

Could be anything, really. Guys, sometimes I buy things because I don’t know what they are and I want to find out.

We have so much stuff we probably can’t sell it all in one weekend. But, as long as it’s moving, I’ll keep unpacking and setting more stuff out. If you want something that you don’t see, ask. It’s worth a shot. I may have it, I might even know where it is

My favorite source for vintage and antique items is the estate sale of an original owner of a 1950s brick ranch style home. That’s because those owners began housekeeping when world population was a quarter of what it is now. Resources were thought to be unlimited. Things were built to last. Materials were high quality and the post war boom was inspiring design and technology. So, I’ll have a significant number of things showing that preference. Russ tends toward 1960s and 1970s

We’re most interested in moving stock that is expensive to ship, things that are heavy like sewing machines dish sets, cookie jars, glass lighting shades, large vases and heavy pottery or large trays and Lazy Susans, or bulky things, like Baskets, Globes and Lamps. We have one Stiffle.

We bought a lot of wall art to sell in an antique mall with cast iron, but we signed up for a wall space this time, not a booth. Once we got the space, the store didn’t want us to hang cast iron on the walls. We couldn’t make the commitment to a high rent booth (where other sellers were hanging cast iron pans and heavy decor on walls supported with the same construction) so, there will be a variety of prints, paintings and stitchery or ephemera and other decor that we still have on hand.

We have a collectible pottery, studio pottery and glassware, plus all kinds of miscellaneous.

You can go to our Six Degrees Shop to see a very limited selection of some things. Right now, it’s mostly more expensive items that are listed. You can also search the shop name in Google to see previous listings for things that may or may not have sold.

We have hundreds, literally, of Wilton special shaped cake pans and as many ceramic shortbread or cookie molds.

We have a few big ticket items like a 1950s steel kitchen and furniture, a Table and Radial arm Saw. We also have a lot of stuff that would be great for set staging, like 50s card tables and poker sets.

There will also be some standard yard sale items like clothing for adults and children and toys, garden and pet items and live plants, indoor and outdoor, some native.

It’s hard to absorb the cost of shipping on really inexpensive things too, like small collectibles, housewares, small planters and floral, craft supplies, fabric and smalls. We need to ship priority for the tracking, but the lowest priority rate is $9.35. We’ll be selling a lot of the things that are $8 and less because few people want to pay $20 with tax for an $8 item. I wouldn’t want to, and I don’t like not being able to offer better options. On top of that, taking a loss on things that the buyer paid dearly to receive is particularly frustrating. Listing takes a lot of time and things that have a low price, well, customers think you’re making money on that, but if you’re not taking 20 low cost items to post at once (and I never am) the driving expense alone puts you in the red. It’s time to be out of the loose/loose program.

How day 2 goes may depend on day 1. It will also depend on weather. Saturday I may not bring out things that didn’t sell Friday. I’ve organized stock by different categories over time. Once I have all the Wedgwood or Frankoma, or what ever maker’s stuff that’s left at the end of day one, I may pack those things up by maker rather than function and bring out different things the next day. We’ll still sell Sunday, even if we were rained out Saturday. We’ve been planning this sale since before Russ lost his job in January, so it’s a go unless something really big happens.

Yes! we’d be happy to make a single price for everything, pack it all up for transport and deliver it if you want it all.

There will be some free items, but not a lot for the 25 cent crowd. I get it. There are things that are interesting, but you don’t have enough time and space in your life unless they are virtually free. We have a designated future home for things like that. If I have items that didn’t sell on the last day, and I can’t bear to pack them back up and drag them back in the house again, they’ll go to friends, relatives or gifting groups like Buy Nothing, Trash Nothing, or FreeCycle. These groups are about community, keeping things out of landfills and sharing. Some things could go to charities that help people out of homelessness like Simple Needs.

Where ?

Our place, 460 Laurian View Court 30075. it’s near where Cherokee, Cobb and North Fulton meet, or if your thing is cities, it’s where Marietta, Roswell and Woodstock meet.

When ?

June 2 and 3 from 9-4. We won’t run you off if you get there at 4:15 and we haven’t put it all away. Rain Date 2 weeks later. But, the long range forecast looks good and our first date was in January, so we’re really hoping this goes on the 19th.

Why ?

This sale has been planned since it was just intended trade my basement full of vintage for advertising money to promote our Kickstarter. Now? Well, now we’ll be dancing a jig if it just covers some of the unexpected big ticket expenses and losses we’ve dealt with recently.

The goal is to make life organizable and ready to move on to better things while offsetting unexpected recent costs like a large Car Repair, unexpected Unemployment, the New Phone (‘Cause He Doesn’t Have the Company Number Anymore), the Broken Computer,the other broken computer, Karen’s New Tooth, Russ’ New Tooth (stress shows up as clenching and grinding sometimes), Video Project Advertising Money, some smaller medical costs and random other things like bike repair.

The plus, we hope, is that we will be able to Take Back Our Basement and our Sanity while Getting Rid of the Storage Unit fees.

What a list! What a few months we’ve had!

You know, some people have a lot more to deal with. We’re grateful for all of the things that aren’t falling apart and hoping the sale will be a good all around fix for some things that did fall apart.

Pricing

With some exceptions, stuff is going to be basically 75% off of market prices. It will be easier to let the stuff we never spent 2 hours or more cleaning, researching and listing go for bottom prices, but we’re here to sell this stuff, not keep it.

People have all kinds of thoughts and strategies about pricing stuff. It can be motivated by good intentions, bad intentions or sheer desperation. Extremes can clash, the seller who wants full retail or better for a regretted purchase after they broke it or lost parts isn’t going to get on well with the buyer who wants to pay a quarter for something “worth” hundreds, or thousands for bragging rights in social media groups.

Pricing guidelines can bring the extremes closer and increase the chances of an exchange. The linked article says the most unpopular pricing method is “make an offer”. I hate that too, and for the same reason quoted in the article, you don’t know where to start or if a meeting of the minds is even possible. My sale is going to be exactly that though. “Make me an offer”, but I’m going to tell you exactly how to offer me something I’m very likely to accept.

Two Ways to Make an Offer

The Easy Way

Is it worth a box of ‘Nilla wafers? How many boxes of ‘Nilla wafers is it worth to you?

The Market Way: The Discounted Market Based Approach

Search Ebay (or other) sold prices. Average the last 3 sold prices. Show us your search and offer half without the shipping. For most things, that will be 75% off of what it would cost you to order online. For some, it may only be half price, but for others, it will be more like 90% off.

Show us your search if you want help. In most cases we’ve searched the items, but we may not have done it recently.

Tuesday Trippin’ April 25

I have edited old posts and I have bits in the works, but it’s been 6 weeks since I posted anything. There are a combination of things responsible, none of which dampen our commitment to the project.

Some of our other commitments and breaks were: We visited Mom while my sister took a trip. We visited Russ’s Dad too. We made the most of those trips with some side hikes, both coming and going. We did a native plant activity with a native plant group using iNaturalist because there is a plant identification component to the project. We took a small break too, took an apple grafting class similar to this one with the Georgia Center for Urban Agriculture. This is a related article. We Russ injured his hand, ripped it open with a screwdriver, but at least that happened after the grafting and he’s fine now. We were pretty frustrated that that had to postpone the giant vintage yard sale.

We’re reassessing and will have more to say on that soon. There are no huge changes in our priorities. The project is on.

Until next time, have a glorious day, and we’ll see you on the trail!

Tuesday Trippin’ March 7

The Training

We’ve had some beautiful breezy spring weather and we’ve been out in it a lot. We’ve been better about doing some walking for the recovery and cross training. It’s pretty easy while wanting to build mileage to just ride for the recovery exercise, but we’re getting more disciplined about variety of movement and it makes a difference.

The pollen is coming on strong. Russ has been writing messages on my car with his finger. Soon it will be raining less frequently and car wash season will be in full swing.

One day Russ was dragging and I went on for extra miles alone. I was afraid I’d be drained the next day, but wasn’t. Russ is finding more days when he thinks he’s dragging and it turns out he was riding faster than he thought. As we approach top performance goals I’m going to appreciate that he cares about the metrics more that I do.

The Project

This morning there were beautiful Mallard ducks flying in to the retention pond just as we cycled by and a deer right on the trail. Before I dreamed up this project, those would have simply been nice experiences. Now, they also feel like missed opportunities to catch the beauty on film. It’s but one example of how the project has turned a stress reduction event into a stressor instead. Most people can give an example of how turning “hobbies” into business can take some of the joy away. And it will get “stressier” once we are tasked with deliverables.

When cameras are rolling, there will be significant heartburn when we fail to capture moments that come along, but once we do capture those moments, they will bring the dream of sharing these moments alive. I’m eagerly excited about the project and know that it will be primarily positive experience. I also fully expect to go back to my carefree “just ride” ways as soon as the project finishes.

Until next time, have glorious days and we’ll see you on the trail.

Tuesday Trippin’ February 28

The Training

Training is going well, but, living so far from the trail and riding more often is time consuming. There are so many things we feel pressured to complete. After our last three rides Russ has winced when he noticed the time. I don’t like that he feels that pressure, but It feels a little bit confirming for all the times I’ve ridden alone and been shocked that the day got away from me. By the time we load bikes, drinks and gear, dress, drive, ride and reverse the process, then shower, clean bikes gear and kit, it’s a 6-8 hour bite from our day and it isn’t always conveniently placed to better meet other obligations efficiently. Some days it feels like that is all we can accomplish in a day.

The reward for all the time it takes is that Russ is getting happier and happier with his riding. There’s a lot of tough work ahead for both of us, but we’re on target for the project.

Other than really feeling the time it takes on a big level, the most remarkable thing I can think of about this week’s training is the weather.

We’ve been hearing frogs since mid January and last week we saw a snake on the path at Big Creek. Apparently the first snake bite of the year is often reported in January in Georgia, So, they do move around a bit when it’s cold. But, we live in the north end of the state and actually seeing one out on the paved trail in February was a first for me. (This one was non-venomous.) Spring just feels like it came on in a rush.

Two weeks ago I was in severe physical distress when I failed to protect my hands well enough from low temperatures on an early morning ride, and this week I’m so happy about digging out the fingerless gloves, or riding without any, so I can take photos without having to take off the gloves.

You can’t really prioritize riding at the same time that you prioritize getting pics for the website, but some things are worth stopping for. If the electronic sensitive gloves don’t work (and they never do), the time it takes to whip out the phone and take off the gloves usually costs you the shot.

The Project

We’ve been busy, but aren’t ready to share results. You know that day when consistent work comes together in what seems like, but isn’t, a sudden moment? Yeah, we’re not there, but it may be just around the corner. I know we’re accomplishing things and doing good work, but that big rush of satisfaction in getting someplace isn’t here yet.

Our primary non-training foci have been to get 1. The t-shirt researched (which brand to offer, which company to use for screen printing, how to promote it) and out there. 2. Prep for our big stock reduction sale. 3. Do the million little things that that finish off websites, campaigns and projects. It’s those things that show planning, preparation and readiness for the success that we’re working on.

Until next week, have a Glorious Day, and we’ll see you on the trail!

T-Shirts!

The Big Picture for Our Side Step into T-shirts

The bigger trail video project we’re working on has always been a good idea that could be a real benefit to us and others as well as a long shot (with respect to getting the word out and getting it funded). We’re so ready to do that. There’s the matter of paying for everything though. We’re not ready for the successful funding campaign that has to come first.

We’re intentionally making the video project low impact, so when originally considering supporter rewards for the video project, we considered a t-shirt, but decided to make all the rewards digital. There were several reasons. First, because “no reward” support levels are often close to the same price point as “t-shirt reward level” support options. That can cause a supporter to think “Well, it’s basically free, I might as well go ahead and get the shirt.” When a person chooses a shirt that way, they aren’t necessarily that interested in wearing it. It may go straight to a thrift store, or worse, it might even get round filed before it ever gets worn, the worst form of Fast Fashion. Fast Fashion has big environmental and human costs so we didn’t want to offer clothing that might not be used.

On top of that, the shirt is never actually free. There’s a real cost of production. For every t-shirt reward the project has a real monetary cost and needs more supporters to meet the project budget, which produces even more t-shirts that may never be worn.

But when life changed, we came to the idea of doing a t-shirt as it’s own project, one that people would buy because they wanted to wear it.

The Hiccup

When Russ lost his job, he broke the news with the joke that he’d have plenty of time to work on the project. In truth, the newfound freedom could be a potential stroke of serendipity that would make everything work out for the best, and things may still work out that way, they just haven’t yet.

The job loss blindsided Russ, and we needed to reassess personal threats and potentials to see how much actual freedom we had for the project in stress mode. We went in a few directions all at once without knowing what to prioritize. It doesn’t help that I’m so overdue to be earning something. Ongoing family obligations, the pandemic and the project have tacked years on to what would have otherwise been a short time away from paid work for me. I don’t have any regrets about choosing family, or pursuing the project, but the financial downside to those choices has been life changing. I’m not excited about all of the changes those choices brought.

As much as I need focus, direction, progress and movement right now, Russ has needed time. It’s just a really good thing that we love each other because we’re not in the same place and it feels like love is all we have right now. We keep recommitting to the project, but the challenge is how to get there from here without having epic failure rock our world.

Part of our reassessment has been to answer the question “Would the sale of a T-shirt ease the financial pain, or just delay the project?” With all the competing time obligations and the pressure to move forward with the project itself, we’re already swamped. But the answer seems to be that we should give it a shot… if we do it right.

As a frequent thrift store shopper, I see Kickstarter rewards in Atlanta area thrift stores from time to time. Don’t get me wrong. Just because a reward made it there doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t a worthy item. But, if a lot of any given item makes it into the mega dumpster out back, that, of course, would be a different story.

We’re willing to offer T-shirts as a stand alone project because people wear them. People wear them a lot, and T-shirts are only fast fashion if they have a short life cycle. Even if they make it to the thrift store fairly soon they’re only a waste of resources if nobody ever wears them. So we’ll do our best to create and offer a t-shirt that people will want to wear and use, responsibly sourced shirts that last well and can be recycled or up cycled.

I can’t wait till we have them ready to show you! They’re going to be great!

Tuesday Trippin’ February 21

The Rides

Tuesday (the day after the cold ride I wrote about last week) was low key. I took it mostly easy in case I wasn’t quite over Monday. The next day Russ and I rode together. He was stiff and didn’t ride as well as he expected. I rode a little further than he did and sprinted for a bit of the extra, but we’re still evening out and that’s a little less common when we ride together. About four hours afterward I was feeling lousy, don’t know if I was still recovering from Monday’s chill or if it was something different.

The week has had a lot of timing between rain and washing trail trash off the bikes. It feels good that we’re getting better about bike maintenance. The plan was always to be better when we got project bikes, but the time to form better habits is now. We’ve both felt like we were fighting some low level illness and haven’t pushed as hard as we would have otherwise.

The Project

Russ vectorized the logo in prep for using is in all the places we will use it and ordered insulated cups engraved with it. They were actually pretty reasonably priced. They would engrave your Yeti if you brought one in, but we opted for a less expensive option, and if you do this yourself, shop around. There’s a wide range of prices. We got ours from a trophy and engraving shop that was doing their own work rather than a reseller who had to add middleman profit.

I’m about to hit publish and this awesome logo is still not at the top of the website, but I expect it to be there really soon. Russ has been picking up a little html to get it into the banner and we are looking at the “it needs to look good on the phone or on the laptop” aspect of it all. It feels a little odd to have the logo in the physical world and not on the website, but we’re making progress step by step, inch by inch.

And now it’s time to get out there and ride before the rain comes.

Have a glorious week, and we’ll see you on the trail

Tuesday Trippin’ February 14

Yesterday was sunny. The high was in the 60s, glorious day for a ride, right? But, I had school bus duty and an appointment to finish my dental crown right in the middle of the school day. I needed to get my miles in early.

I was ready when the bus left. I had loaded the bike, filled the bottles and packed the best gloves I had. I got off a little earlier than my best hope. I saw that the temp on the car said 37º and that was lower than I was expecting, but I kept driving, thinking it would warm a little before I got there. I got to the trail right about official sunrise, no increase in temp, no change in my determination to ride. That’s one of the biggest things that leads to disaster BTW, neglecting or refusing to update actions based on new data.

It was rush hour. I’ve never noticed the humming roar of traffic on 400 being loud enough to hear from Big Creek, but in the winter when leaves that muffle sound are gone, I’m more likely to hit the trail for the evening rush hour instead because it’s warmer. In the evening, traffic is more spread out and there’s more ambient noise to mask highway noise.

As I got the bike ready, I figured that the ride would be short, but not as short as it was. The path had not been cleaned since some high wind or wind/rain event. It was thick with sweet gum balls, a nemesis to narrow tires and ankles. There were a lot of small branches and some tree falls. The path was cleared of the big stuff, but the small stuff littered the whole way.

My visor was fogging. It does that when I try to cover both my nose and ears with a neck gaiter. The jacket I keep in the car was plenty warm. My feet and legs were okay, I think, even though I put on the lighter weight riding tights with patches of mesh and didn’t change once I realized which pair I had. It was my hands that caused the problem. I didn’t go far or fast. It wasn’t possible to dodge the sweet gum ball carpet, even if I had been able to see much through my fogged visor. I kept taking it off and wiping, but I still caught several balls that shifted my back tire an inch or three.

I turned when I thought my hands would be miserable by the time I got back, but I misjudged. It was already too late. The Raynaud’s Syndrome hasn’t caused me much trouble since that day I was photo documenting the record flight in North Dakota and learned that “seeing stars” was real. I took my gloves off that day so I could feel the camera shutter button. This morning’s 37º was a great deal warmer than the temps out west and I didn’t remove my gloves this time, but they were cool weather gloves, not proper winter riding gloves, there was the wind chill, and I was exposed for longer. When I got back loading the bike was a challenge. I tried a variety of things to warm my hands in the car, knowing that doing it too fast would be a problem.

Russ was working a temporary day job to earn a few dollars. I intended to text him that I was in the car and ok, but I wasn’t going to attempt that with fingers that felt like I’d grabbed stinging nettles. When I pushed the “call Russ” button on the dashboard screen I hadn’t even been willing to try to take off my helmet. After our call, I was sitting at a traffic light and felt nauseated, then dizzy. I remembered the N. Dakota stars and pulled into a shuttered office building parking lot beside me to wait for it to end. Thankfully, there were no stars this time and shortly after I decided to try my hands on the helmet clip, I started to drive again. When I came home to shower, I made sure the water wasn’t as hot as I wanted it to be, and when I laid down to rest after I set the alarm and dressed first so I’d be willing to get out from under the covers and keep the dental appointment.

After the appointment I came home. So did my daughter. That’s when I remembered that she was doing afternoon bus pick-up and I could have had a long balmy ride after my dental appointment.

So, now I’ve had a good recent lesson on getting fixated and I also know that I shouldn’t attempt rides in the 30s, not even the high 30s, until and unless I have better protection. I seem to be fully recovered from the lesson and I plan to have a better experience today. I was thinking that would be with Russ, but the job was bigger than expected and he’ll be working again

Russ found a sweet surprise in his cheese curds!

That’s it for this week. Have a glorious Valentine’s Day with a trail and/or a person you care about!

Tuesday Trippin’ February 7

Training

We’ve had some good rides, getting better too. Today I was actually warm enough to want to take off a layer. I think we’ll be riding at the same level soon, but it won’t last long. Russ will pass me by. That’s fine, he’s the stronger rider when we’re both riding regularly. We’ll soon both be out of winter level riding mode and shortly after that will be riding out target 200 miles a week. We won’t be so concerned about getting those miles consolidated into just two rides until the project funds. Health wise, more shorter rides are good. Two hundred-mile rides is for making the project/rest of our lives work. Fantasy Island, we’d live in the middle and spread the rides across more days.

Planning and Prep

We’re doing our best to rebound from the getting laid off curve ball. Russ and I had opposite reactions and coping mechanisms. We were both oversaturated with one thing after another, but I wanted to move into hyperdrive on the project and have it submitted before his last check. He did a lot, but he also needed some time to regroup. We’ve been moving through the transition together and trying to balance short term, long term, project and non-project goals. It’s been real, but I think we’re moving into a good spot. It will make more sense to talk about some of the things we’ve been working on when they are ready.

The Sale

For some time I’ve been planning the sale of stock that was originally intended to be listed in our Etsy Store, handmade, vintage and antiques. This week I worked in the basement a lot separating things that I still want to list from things that increases in shipping cost have made undesirable to sell online. I’m rechecking market prices on the items I’m packing for the trip to the driveway. Handling the boxes dries my hands even more than doing dishes!

Originally, I was hoping to make enough to advertise the Kickstarter Funding Campaign. Then a lot of other things happened. A modest goal of $5K would require selling 1000 items at $5 each. My target sale price would be half of recent Ebay sold prices without shipping. I have plenty of stock and that represents about a 75% discount over what ordering on line would cost, but that’s still pretty ambitious in the greater Atlanta market. If I have too much left over afterward, I’ll head off to some flea market on the first feasible weekend.

We’ll see. We also have some big ticket items in storage, like a vintage St Charles kitchen that we paid to salvage ourselves from a tear down. It is really special. A guy drove from Kentucky to get just one piece of it. Selling that alone could meet some significant goals and we’d like to get out of the storage unit. Whether you adopt Marie Kondo’s pre or post children philosophy, it seems crazy to keep things you have to pay to store. But, adding to that, the storage facility was sold to a company that likes to raise rent often and now it’s nearly double what we paid when we signed the contract.

So, there are a few different ways the sale could fund one or more of the unexpected expenses that have hit recently and we might even eliminate a storage rental fee. Worst case, it forces me into better organization.

So there’s our week. See you on the trail, and have a glorious day!