Spring cleaning/Taking stock of things

Yes I am still spring cleaning. I am still throwing things out, which is not as easy as it used to be with all the restrictions on what will and will not be collected or recycled. I am looking for places to donate kitchen items. I am a single guy with enough dishes for 24 people. I have about 35 coffee mugs. There are all kinds of things that I have never or will never use. I collected comic books at two different times in my life. I have some very valuable books. It's also a very large collection. I have about half of it with me now and that about 3000 books. I also have books that aren't very valuable. The challenge will be going through all the boxes and separate the good from the not so good. I need a price guide and find out what the lesser ones are worth and just sell them off to a dealer. The rest will have to be professionally graded and hopefully I will be able sell the at an auction. This will take some time. A year. Two years. I really don't know. I could end up with a very nice chunk of change.

It's time to rid myself of things. The comics that I bought as a kid of 10 or 11 were bought because I liked them. I started collecting again later in my 20's, after a "nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon" visit to a comic book convention. This was in 1975. I saw all kinds of people from young kids to people in their 40's+. Then I got a look at some of the prices the dealers were asking for some of those books. I saw a book I had with a $300 price tag. That same book in near mint codition is worth today somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000. Alas my copies are not in mint condition, at least not the very early ones. Still, even with inflation, not a bad return for a 12 cent investment.

As I said I am ridding myself of things. Things that I don't need. Things that might make me some money. And as I go through things that I have carried with me, for whatever reason, all these years, I realised I am really reassessing my life at this point. It's like the previous segment of my life is coming to a close and the next one will be opening. My homes is a bit chaotic at the moment (well messy is what I really mean) because it took me about a week to find out where I should begin. After a few fits and starts I decided to start in the one real big closet that I have for storage. I have cleared space in the last two weeks. Then there's the problem of what to store in the newly liberated space. I guess it's the same point I'm at in my life. I also guess that it's more obvious to me that I have retirement coming in the next several years. In other words I'm getting older. That really doesn't upset me. Hey I'm not dead! There's no future in it. I'm in good health. I'm still working and I have to admit I have a pretty comfortable life. That could quickly change these days.

So I suppose I'm getting ready look at my working life in the rear view mirror. On the other hand I'm not scared of retirement. I would do it right now if I could, but I can't.

This whole exercise of cleaning up some clutter and reorganizing things in my home is liberatting. There's a lot more to do but I can't stop now and that's a good thing. I have already filled up the recycling bin. Our trash is collected on Monday. As I sit here and write this it's 12:07 AM Wednesday, the 11th of April. I filled it in two days.
OK it's now morning and I'm off to work.
I'm outta here.