Got Junk?

I am in San Antonio this week with Owen visiting my mom so she can spend some time with her new grandson. She just flew back on Tuesday night from a spending a week with her boyfriend visiting his family in New England. So my sister and I decided to take this opportunity (while my mother was still out of town) to start cleaning out certain rooms and the garage....

But before we get to that story, let me just start by telling you that BOTH of my parents were complete packrats! They NEVER threw out anything. The attic is jammed pack with stuff, so is the garage and EVERY closet and room in this house. It's quite overwhelming at first when you are sitting here trying to decide where to begin with this mess. My mom had some work done in the house about two years ago, had the house repainted, carpets pulled out and new flooring put in, new toliets, new tile, etc.etc. And when they did this, they had to remove things out of the room they were working on at the time, so things were just thrown into boxes and thrown in different rooms and in the garage, thus junking up things even worse. Then my mom mentioned how much she wanted to get everything out of my sister's old room so we could redo it and make it the 'kids' room, so Colby would have a room to sleep in when he came to visit. So that is where it all started. My sister had a few days head start on the house while my mother was out of town and started tearing the room apart and throwing crap into the garage. I started cleaning out a closet and found parts to like FOUR different vaccum cleaners.... ones that WE NO LONGER HAVE. I found four car manuals to CARS we no longer have...I found a spare tire to a boat trailer we no longer have... two giant computer monitors that weigh 50lbs a piece, my father's pilot flight log from 1970...my dad's old stereo equipment and a vcr from MONTGOMERY WARDS....

Okay so now I have spent the last four days going thru all the crap in the garage and we were going to borrow someone's truck to come and haul all the junk away.. but then the other night about 2am I had a relevation. Not only did we have to worry about cleaning and organizing all the junk in the garage, but now we would have to worry about loading a truck (several times) and then hauling the crap somewhere and unloading the truck (several times) to dispose of all the crap. But where would you dispose of all that crap? Sneak into an apartment complex and use the dumpster? Go to a landfill and dump it? But then it hit me.... there was just NO way I was taking my TWO MONTH old baby to a LANDFILL while I unloaded a frickin truck of JUNK!!!!! So I looked online and found 1800GotJunk and the lightbulb came on. So I called them the next day and arranged for them to come pick up all the JUNK today. They come in with a truck and two guys come and load the truck with all your junk and haul it away for you! Presto Chango! Junk GONE!! WooHoo! Just like that :) They charge you by the volume of junk that they haul away... not by the time it takes to load the truck. And by the amount of crap that we put together in the garage... I may just have to pay for filling the entire truck. Oh well.. it will be worth all the extra time and hassle it would have been to haul it all away myself. For now all the crap is sitting outside in the drive way and we are just hoping people stop by and TAKE IT!

So that's where I've been this week... Fun, huh?