JanJan, you might think to replace the toilets if they are that bad. The flush right ones we bought were pretty cheap & work great. It was an easy job. Our plungers and brushes have decorative storage housings but it's still evident what they are. I will move them to a spot in the garage, maybe all but one set will go to storage. Disposable brushes are a great idea. I am buying us all cheap travel bags for our toiletries and moved my son's things to our bathroom so we all use the same space and it's easier to maintain. We painted & reorganized his bathroom space, all needed. I will put up some items I bought for the new place and we just won't use that space on a daily basis anymore. While some people may feel differently, people expect to actually see signs of you living there. If your market is bad like ours, you could be spending a lot of money on disposable brushes. Do you have room under the sink? While having it look like a show house is nice, what does your neighborhood demand? With ours we don't have to "not live here" because even if I don't get stuff picked up, ours shows cleaner then most around here. I was told that you can tell it is kept up verses showing for a cleaning. I put the dish drainer in a cabinet, hubby likes to throw it in the locked shed. The offers we've had the toilet brush was where it usually is in the decorative holder and the dish drainer was in the cabinet. How much do pods cost? We are getting ready to sell and I think we have a lot of stuff to store. I have been selling things I don't think we need, but we can't sell everything. I am interested in the POD idea, but was wondering the cost. What is the market like in your area? Do you have kids? Will any of their stuff go into the PODS? For us, the PODS would have been really expensive and the location it would be kept at is a 30 minute drive, one way. They also require 24 hours IIRC notice if you want to get your stuff. I don't recall if there was a fee either if they had to bring the POD out to you so you can access it. From what I remember last year, it's put in a storage facility and some times they are stacked, so they might have to get it down. We ended up renting a garage sized storage at about $125 per month, thankfully too. The PODS would have been more expensive where we live. You also have to worry about packing it so that nothing breaks / moves during the drive to where it's going. We've been to our storage unit a few times on a moments notice. I couldn't imagine having to call someone and make an appointment.

My scrapbooking friends envy me. My mother passed away about a year ago and I got about $2000 that I wanted to spend in some way to remember her. So I had custom cabinets made (desk height with drawer base units and upper wall cabinets) and changed a third bedroom into a scrapbooking and sewing room. One wall section is about 7 feet and I have it set up for scrapbooking and the other wall is about 5 feet and it is for sewing. I had the cabinets custom made because I am short and the only readymade cabinets I could find would have had to be kitchen counter height or vanity height and those wouldn't have been the full 2 feet deep. I'm already running out of space though, and I think it might have been wiser to get a utility type cabinet to store paper and and larger items in. The only bad thing is I seem to be addicted to scrapbooking and buying more. I guess I better get busy scrapbooking all those pictures mom had! I enjoyed seeing/hearing what areas other people had. I will try to get a picture of my area. Ruth in Iowa

Some things I want to keep but have no where to put them are the big Wilton novelty cake pans & cookie racks. If they're not too tall they could go into underbed boxes, either the kind on wheels or just the ordinary cardboard kind. I'm a big believer in using the wasted space under the bed! They also are unlikely to be harmed by attic heat. Otherwise, think really, REALLY hard about just how much are you going to use every one of these pans? Can you pare down your collection? Is making novelty cakes and cookies a frequent hobby or a small business, or are these the sorts of things you only do once in a while? I'm a cookery nut too and I found it hard as hell to weed down my collection of goodies and gadgets before our move last September but I'm not so good at bending the time-space continuum to create storage space where there isn't any. Trust me, it was a wrench to put those adorable heart-shaped miniature springform pans in the donation box because I remembered the expressions of delight when I produced miniature heart-shaped cheesecakes for someone, but we just didn't use them enough to justify the space they occupied. Do you use all three ice chests so often that you need to keep three of them on hand at all times, or is there someone you could give, say, two of them to who would let you borrow them back when you need them? The ironing board. Right now it is behind my bedroom door. We had another ironing board - one of those short over the door things in a closet. Slide it flat underneath a bed or hang it neatly behind the door on the wall on an ironing board rack, or move the over-the-door one to the back of a bedroom door. There are also attractive ironing board cabinets that mount onto or even recess into the wall between the studs, and some can even be electrified so you can plug the iron in right there. I am assuming you prefer to iron in the bedroom instead of in the laundry room (you couldn't FIT an ironing board in our laundry room anyway!). The upright vacuum. This is a necessary thing and I won't be putting it in the attic. I just don't have anywhere to put it except a closet shoved between the hanging clothes. A closet is fine but organize the closet floor (shoe storage, blah blah) so that you can slip it into a corner rather than just shoving it in the middle of the clothes. If you've got a spare $400 floating around (BWAHAHAHAHAHA - who does?) the Dyson DC24 upright vacuum does compact down quite small although in this house the jury's still out as to whether it really stands up to all the hype. The printer for my laptop. Right now it's in the kitchen next to the peninsula where I usually do my work. Is there a chance of a wireless connection between laptop and printer? There are SO many gadgets now that let you print without being physically connected to the printer, and then you can put the printer wherever you can conveniently tuck it away (say an end table with a door where you could drill a small hole in the back for the power cord) without worrying about having to be able to hitch up that printer cable. If you're not technologically adept, there are any number of "rent-a-geek" services to help you. Luggage. Right now in the floor of the closet, but I'd like to keep stuff off the floor so it's easier to vacuum and looks bigger. Attic. Get bags of cedar shavings from the pet department at Walmart or whatever, punch a bunch of holes in each bag, and put them into old pillowcases, then put THAT into each suitcase. The cedar shavings will keep bugs and critters from taking up residence in them, absorb any moisture to prevent mold, and keep them from smelling musty. Or under beds if they'll fit, in which case you can fill them with other things. Make the adult kids (if they're old enough for apartments, furnished or no, they're adults in my book) responsible for their belongings - you are not running a storage facility or dumping ground for their stuff, you have enough stuff of your own. Maybe they can pool their funds for a storage unit; I could see their weeding out their belongings, selling some on CL, eBay, or at a yard sale to raise the money to pay at least part of the storage fees on the things they absolutely cannot part with. I downsized by 40% last year and had to be absolutely brutal about what came along with us and what had to go. We took several station-wagon-loads to Goodwill, and then about six months after we moved we had another "WHY did we move this?" purge and took another two station-wagon-loads out. You have to be kind of heartless... most of what we got rid of was stuff that other people had given us and we - okay, I - had to get over a good bit of guilt about giving it the heave-ho.

We moved out of our house last year for a gut remodel of our kitchen, refinishing of main floor wood floors and replacing upstairs carpeting with wood and painting of walls & trim throughout. We were able to store some things in our attic during this time, but all our furniture was in a storage pod. It was exhausting cleaning this place out. Not the big stuff, but every closet, cabinet and drawer. We had just cleared out my parents' home of 30 yrs. when my Mom passed and set my Dad up in an apartment nearby. So our energy gauge was depleted from the start. We had to do it, though, as I'd been without a working range for 2 yrs. and the refrigerator had begun to fail. I swore I would never, ever buy anything else for the house that wasn't essential. I have always kept a clutter-free home in my living spaces, but my closets and cabinets and attic were where all the overflow stuff lived. Our DS moved overseas 6 yrs. ago so we have most of his accumulated worldly treasures in our attic. And DD has a fair share up there, too, as her little Cape has little storage. Aside from a few indulgences - like new glass pieces for my BD - I've managed to live by the "one thing in/one thing out" rule for the past year. This post is further incentive for me to keep at it ;)