The Great Cleanout trudges on (of mom's condo).

Main Living Area: It's in pretty good shape. This a.m. my carpenter and I will meet there at 9 a.m. to haul out 4 bookshelves and a small desk. Of my mother's 7 bookshelves, I sold 3 of them for $20 each on Facebook Tag Sale (so much better than Craig's List or Patch). They are particleboard, so the Make a Home Foundation people who picked up the other furniture didn't want them.

I will call Good Will this a.m. and see if they accept particleboard shelves. If so, it will save me money I would otherwise have to spend to leave it at our transfer station/dump.

I would like to keep one of these shelves myself, so we can load up carpenter's truck, hopefully drop off the 3 shelves and small desk at goodwill and then drop off the 1 shelf at my place.

The additional challenge there is that my masons have started work redoing my front entry and it will be difficult to get up the driveway. We will have to carry the shelves up from my basement.

Yesterday, while I was waiting for one of my shelving buyers to show up, I began cleaning out the finished basement. My mother used it as a 2nd studio and it is packed with artist supplies, matted work and so on. I found 2 whole boxes filled with nothing but wood dowels that look like they came off furniture. Several cigar boxes packed with staples. Things she collected over the years.

One thing she has even more of is frames: photo frames still unwrapped in original packaging, frames for art, etc. I've been in touch with the local Montessori school and they will take the frames and miscellaneous supplies as a donation, but I still have to pack up my car with it and bring it there, next week.

My mother also kept half used or leaky tubes of paints, which I'm pretty sure qualify as hazardous wastes. So I will save those couple of small boxes in my garage until the next household hazardous waste drop off day occurs. Unfortunately,my town just had theirs so i may have to wait another year.

The glass replacement on the slider doors in lower level has now morphed into replacement of the entire sliding door unit, becus i discovered the lock was busted on it. I had a guy over there yesterday to measure for an estimate. I will likely go with this guy over the first place I called becus the first place I called told me they only work with certain brands of doors, and these were not especially cheap. I found I could get some slider doors at Lowes/Home Depot for as little as $300, and they got very good reviews to boot. The place I had measuring yesterday will install whatever you want, so i gave him the info about the Reliabilt 300 Series.

I amt thinking of calling Empire Carpet back to see if I could add on replacement carpeting to the lower staircase to the finished basement, which I sort of overlooked when I had the main living area priced for carpeting. I counted and measured the stairs. Probably a few hundred more but it would look so much better to potential buyers.

My mother cataloged all her life's work with slides. I mean, it's a small cabinet filled with nothing but slides. My house is bursting at the seams with her stuff. IMO, slides are obsolete; if someone were interested in her work, I could simply take photos and email jpgs. Do you agree? I would like to dump her slides; it will be hard to do, as it obviously took so much time to do, but I don't think they are needed. I have so many other records of her work in other forms.

This afternoon a woman from the CT Handweavers Guild is coming down to my place to see my mother's yarn supplies. It'll be about an hour's drive for her. She agreed to let me barter for the cost of the $30 ad I want to place on her group's website for my mother's larger loom and all the yarn supplies. She will pick out some yarns. She usually gets supplies at 60% of wholesale price; I assured her I would make it worth her while to drive down here.

I also contacted a place in TN whose website I found who buys yarns from people. However, the woman said shipping costs could outweigh the benefit. She will have the owner call me next week.

Ideally, I'd like to find another place just like that one that is closer to where I live so that shipping is not an issue. Selling these yarns individually isn't really a viable option, not when you have over 20 large trash bags and baskets sitting in your dining room filled with yarns.

In the living room and family room, meanwhile, I have all my mother's art propped up on the floor and against the walls. Next week an art/estate liquidator is coming with his arts expert to see if they might want to buy my mother's art as a lot. I suspect the price they may offer, if they even do make an offer, will be a real lowball offer. Not sure how this will go.

So there you have it. Still cleaning out the condo, trying to sell the big loom, yarn supplies and art. I have next week off; condo scheduled to go on MLS on Friday, come hell or high water. New carpeting in on MOnday, slider door replacement will follow.

Did I tell you I lost 5 lbs from all the work?