What to do with all this stuff????

When the decision was made to make the move to Cuenca we didn't realize that was the easy part. Putting the plan into action was something entirely different. There was the necessary legal stuff that had to be done but with the guidance of Gabriella Espinosa, our immigration attorney, that wasn't too difficult. Next step was to decide what to sell and what to keep. Once that decision was made we just knew we were on the home stretch and once we brought an auctioneer on board this too would be a piece of the perverbial cake. Well, our friends Mick and Kathy used an auctioneer and did very well. We contacted him and he gave us costs and percentages that he would charge which were quite different from what Mick and Kathy had and then he suggested maybe we should just sell the stuff ourselves. I guess he wasn't impressed with our "stuff". So on to the next guy and the story was even worse. One more call and things were not looking too promising for a professional seller to make us lots of money and do all the work.
  The yard sales were the way we had to go. The fisrt one was in the rain (Oh, the fun we had) but the results were actually pretty good, but we still had more than half our "stuff" left. We waited a couple of weeks and did it again. Good weather this time but only fair results.
  We had had enough of the yard sale routine by now and sold of few things on Craigs list and the neighbors came by and generously bought more "stuff". Finally, the last items we sold went to people we worked with and our selling was done.
  Of course, the garage was still too full of "stuff" to get a car inside and it was time to donate. Our neighbor's church was having a yard sale of its own to help indians in Alaska and so they came and took all the "stuff" that was left in the garage and Habitat for humanity took our living room furniture and we were out of "stuff" at last. It wasn't easy or smooth or professional and we lost a few hours of sleep trying to get through the process but it was over and we were relieved to move onto the next phase even though we were now sleeping on a mattress pad on the floor.
  Before we left Mooresville our neighbors, who had been great neighbors, of 15 years had a picnic to send us off. Some told us how they wished they could go with us and others explained why they could never do it. To their credit no one said anything like " ARE YOU NUTS"

                                 Some of our friends and neighbors, thanks guys you are terrific