New Blower/Mulcher/Vac

It was on sale and we ordered one. It is a Worx Tri-Vac. We don’t have slide-out covers on the fifth wheel like we did on the motorhome. Instead we are buying the Tri-Vac and see how well that works to remove debris from the top of the slide-outs.

Worx Tri-Vac is a three tools in one. It is blower/ mulcher/vac . It’s lightweight, approximately 8lb. They say you can use it with one hand.

They claim as a blower, it can produces an air speed of over 210 mph. As a yard vac, produces enough suction to vacuum 14 gallons of dry leaves in less than a minute. It has an air regulator that you can adjust.

They claim it is quieter than most blower/vacs so you won't bother your neighbors.

We also thought it might come in handy to clean up around the RV. We have stayed at some places that had a lot of debris on the ground around the picnic tables and parking pads. They claim it will also mulch trash too. We will find out just how good a product it really is! It will be in on Friday and I can’t wait to try it out!

Lots of STUFF Still

We had another garage sale this weekend. The weather was beautiful and we didn’t mind being outside. Our sale didn’t do very good this weekend. It might be because October is Texas State Fair Month here and this weekend was also First Monday Trades day in Canton. We know people would rather be at the Fair or Trades Day. We made about a hundred dollars and got rid of a few things. When I told a friend, It wasn't worth all the work we did dragging the STUFF out for the sale. She pointed out that we did manage to get rid of a few things and that was better than getting rid of nothing. That did make me feel better.  

Oh well, it wasn't a total waste, we had a few friends stopped by and visited with us most of the day and we all enjoyed the nice weather.



We did work in the RV garage and made some more progress. This is the RV garage.

This is the mess the RV garage is in now. It looks bad right now but believe me when I say it was a lot worse. We had STUFF stacked six feet tall on both sides. We have removed a lot of STUFF this past week and will continue for the next few weeks.

Until last week, I only had a foot of clearance on each side after I backed the fifth wheel in. We are making progress. One of the really great things about this whole process is that we know we will never have such a collection of STUFF to deal with again. We will live a much lighter existence!

After we retuned all the garage sale STUFF to the garage we treated ourselves the dinner and had some great mexican food. Sunday we did laundry and somethings around the house. We also ordered a WORX TriVac All-in-One Compact Blower/Mulcher/Vac. We have wanted one to take with us when we hit the road.  They were on sale at ACE Hardware but we had to order it.  Can't wait to get it Friday.   

Tie it Down

I was just reading a post that was written by Kevin and Evelyn (http://rvkhroniclesofkevelyn.blogspot.com/) about a near serious accident due to a ladder and a step stool that had fallen out on the interstate. Lucky for them they didn’t have a serious accident. They did however, have damage to their trailer.

It just blows my mind that people will throw anything in the back of a truck and jump on the freeway without tying it down. We spend a lot of time on the freeway and currently live on a two-lane state highway with a speed limit of 55 MPH and there are no shoulders.

I cannot tell you how often we have witnessed people hauling past our house with stuff blowing out of the back of their vehicles. Not long ago, someone lost a futon and it landed in the middle of the highway. We ran out and pulled it aside before it caused a serious accident. The driver never slowed down. I guess he didn’t realize it had flown out. I guess he will figure it out when he gets to his destination!

Someone else lost a beautiful antique china cabinet. The bed of his truck was full of antiques furniture. Nothing was tied down. He did stop and threw the pieces into the truck. You could tell he was very upset by it.

Another truck lost a yard swing and frame. He stopped, looked it over and drug it into the ditch in front of our house and left it!

Each week before we mow, we have to walk the ditch in front of our house to pick up trash. We pick up beer cans, beer and coke bottles, fast food containers, gloves, socks, feed sacks and paper.

We’ve driven down the interstate and have seen mattresses, ice chest, furniture, bags of clothes, boxes, tires, ladders, brooms, lifejackets, air mattresses, box springs and there was a large awning that fell off a RV. Recently we hit an icemaker box out of a refrigerator.

We don’t leave any kind of trash in the bed of our truck. We don’t want to litter. When we haul stuff we always tie it down. Sure, tying it down takes extra time, but we don’t want to lose anything in route.

I believe these people that have stuff in the bed of their trucks that are not tied down should not be allowed on the road. Not sure how we could enforce it. Stuff blowing out of trucks and cars can cause serious accidents and death.

Enough venting for now.

Making More Progress

In order to save a few dollars we decided to have our landline telephone disconnected. We use our cell phones most of the time anyway. We have been informing everyone for the past couple of weeks that as of October 1, 2010 we would no longer have a home phone. We know a lot of people that don’t have landline phones. It just seems like a waste of money to have our cells and a home phone. It does seem kind of strange not to have that phone number anymore. That number has been Dawn’s family phone number for forty plus years. We considered changing my cell phone number to that number but lately the majority of the calls we receive on that number have been solicitors. We will not miss them! We will not miss the many calls that we answer that are made by machines that play a prerecorded message. I can’t help but wonder if they will they miss us?

Disconnecting the landline is just another small step we have to make in order to move towards our fulltiming life. It is kind of like out with the old, In with the new.

We spent our evening working in the RV garage. We went through more boxes and filled the truck with junk to feed to the dumpster. We made three piles in the floor. One pile for the dumpster, one for the garage sale and one to keep. I was so proud when I noticed that our keep pile was the smallest of the three. We really are making progress! We cleared out an entire corner. Now that is real progress!!!!!

Some of those boxes were left from the house remodel. We had to pack up and move things pretty fast when we remodel the house. We had not yet gone through all of Dawn’s parents stuff. So needless to say, it was amazing the STUFF we found in those boxes last night. We found hearing aids, false teeth, lots of old eye glasses, pictures, record albums, books and old paper work. Dawn found a box of childhood dresses and the suit her father wore when he got married. Just last year Dawn gave her mother’s wedding dress to one of mother’s close friends. When I say her parents saved everything, I am not kidding!

Some of the STUFF we ran across made us laugh and some nearly brought us to tears. For example Dawn’s father, I always called him Pop’s, saved every card we gave him. We found lots of cards. We also found some china that didn’t get packed in the box it was suppose to.

We are planning another garage sale for Saturday so we have to restock our garage sale garage.

We are making PROGRESS!!!