Just a few thoughts, which I am sure are redundant but here goes... 1 - I can't see location but make sure you keep any woody mulches well away from your house. AZ termites are nasty (Lived in PHX for 5 years and I remember the horror stories!) 2 - Natural mulch is what you want, it breaks down and helps your soil. Second best, I'd guess, is chipped rubber product, the white sort, since it will hold moisture and reflect heat. If you do decorative gravel...well I'd say don't. Even white gravel will add heat to your soil in AZ. Plus in order to stop the rock from working its way into your soil you need landscape fabric which adds a whole new level of ugh to tilling etc next year. Plus when monsoon season hits the stuff will often float and if you have any hilliness on your property you will spend a fair bit of time raking it back into place... Just a few thoughts...

Folks, I think we're losing sight of the OP's intention here. First, "excluding family heirlooms and pictures." Second, we KNOW it's all stuff. Mostly all replaceable. That nothing is as important as your family's health. I hope Newdawn will forgive me if I try to recast the question. Maybe ... "What's the one item you'd never let your spouse get if you divorced?" LOL! Maybe ... "If you were moving to a tiny one-bedroom apartment, what's the item that must move in with you?" Maybe ... "What is the one material object in your home that always brings a smile to your face and that makes you feel that you made a great decorating decision?" My pick: This is hard! Perhaps one of my ceramic miniatures of the "Cows on Parade" from its Chicago run, or a metal mobile--both of which remind me not to take things so seriously. Or perhaps my Tivo! Or a large framed photo of a brilliantly citrus green orchid leaf. (Decision making obviously takes me some time!)

I am probably not going to be posting many pics when asking questions any more because I find that too many people are only looking at the pictures, NOT reading the text, and thus their responses are either directly contrary to something I've said in the text (for instance "get rid of XYZ" or "the color of ABC is wrong" when I've already said in the accompanying that I love XYZ so it's not going anywhere or that the color of ABC is really more toward mauve when it shows up as puce in the picture) or have nothing at all to do with what I'm asking. I find that intensely frustrating. I have almost no pictures of my current house because it's still in "whatta dump" stage. No paint (walls need a TON of work), short on furniture, dreadfully designed kitchen that's a perpetual mess because there's nowhere to put things... and forget outside pictures, a few weeks ago we ripped out almost every trace of vegetation outside (and will not be replacing it until next year, probably fall '09 to get the end-of-season sales) due to a honeysuckle invasion that I swear was growing by feet per day and was starting to attack the porch. I'll happily post pictures of my previous house because I think I did a pretty decent job with it. We're not on Google Maps but we're kinda-sorta on Google Earth - but the best you can get is a fuzzy whitish blob in the midst of a bunch of other fuzzy whitish blobs on a fuzzy grayish stripe. No closeups. Our town is clearly not a high priority as far as Google is concerned! WRT security - we live in a somewhat iffy neighborhood so I am one HECK of a lot more worried about the people a dozen houses down the street breaking in looking for meth money than I am about someone trying to track me down via the Internet (I Googlebate every so often just to see what's out there re: me) from half a dozen states away. I've been email-stalked and -harassed a bunch of times in my 18 years online because of my outspoken ;-) opinions and my ISPs have always been helpful in dealing with it. However, I've had meet-ups with a whole slew of people I've met online over the years, twice flying nearly cross-country to do so, and it's been grand fun.

Yep Jean your right, but this Chevy has a lot if miles on it and its still going strong.lol...actually I wasn't so sure about going from neutral drain to spin drain, but I have found spin drain is the better, less lint left on clothes and even if I overdose I only need one rinse. I'm very impressed. Jean you have been quiet lately, everything ok? How's the Mexican detergents doing? What did you think of the Foca? And have you biught any new detergent?