I recently gave a lecture on downsizing for a group of seniors. After my presentation, one of the audience members came up and related the following story.
Her husband, who had passed away three years ago, had been a contractor and had large amounts of building supplies, tools, and hardware. The garage was so full of stuff that neither of their vehicles had been out of the weather for years, and several rooms of the house were also full of “stuff”.
She began taking a load in his pickup truck to the dump every week, but after about a year the truck broke down. She then discovered that if she set up some sheets of plywood on sawhorses as tables in front of the house and put up a “FREE” sign, that every time she filled the tables with items,”by the next morning it was all gone”. After doing this for another year she had finally managed to get rid of all of her husband’s possessions. As she stated proudly “I made it all go away”
Postscript: From my perspective, she spent two years of her life hauling items of potential value to the curb for no monetary return. I could have suggested several ways that she could have done less work, made more money, and had all the material removed in less time.