This is another in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.

Retirement takes on many meanings.

For my wife and me it means more travel, sleeping in, coming and going as we please. For me individually, it means writing what I damn well please on this blog.

It also means we feel the need to get rid of things that we’ve collected over our 45 years of life together.

I told one of my sisters this morning about the last item. So she asked: “You aren’t getting rid of memorabilia, are you?” No, sis. One does not get rid of memorabilia.

Friday morning and again today, we held what only can be called an off-the-cuff garage sale. We didn’t plan it. It just happened.iv

My wife noticed one of our neighbors was having a garage sale about four doors to our west. We live in a neighborhood with alleys and rear-entry garages. We saw the sign advertising our neighbor’s sale, so my wife got this wild hair: I think I’ll put some stuff out in the morning and see what we can sell.

We awoke Friday and she went out and began putting items on the driveway. We had some big items, too. The biggest of which were two dressers. We lugged them out of the garage.

Then the traffic began coursing down the alley. Folks stopped. We chatted them up. They’d look around. They’d buy this item or that.

Then a lady came, took a look at the dressers and said she’d think about it. I left the house to keep an appointment I had made in Masterson, about 30 miles north of Amarillo. My wife called me about 45 minutes later to tell me she sold them both for the asking price with which we had tagged them. Someone else came and bought ’em on the spot.

I came home a little after 11 a.m. We buttoned up our sale for the day.

Then again this morning we were at it again. More traffic. More visitors. More shoppers. More buyers. I was struck by the number of vehicles I saw today loaded with items purchased at earlier garage sales.

We got rid of a lot of small items today and one fairly large item: an indoor Christmas tree that a woman said she needs for her cabin in Red River, N.M.

When it was all over, we made a good bit of cash. We now also have a good bit more room on our garage. Our neighbors down the alley did pretty well with their garage sale, too, I’m happy to report.

All in all, we’ve had a very productive weekend.

We have some traveling money that we’re going to use when we haul our fifth wheel out for our next big adventure. It’ll be a good one. I’ll keep you advised.

Yes, this retirement thing is kind of cool.