In April we cleaned out a garage that was filled to the brim with the remnants of several moves. In fact I opened a box that had moved with me from several states and finally to Massachusetts. It had not been opened in six years! We gave a lot of usable (but to us duplicate) stuff to a church rummage sale. Clothing that we will never fit into again went to the Salvation Army. The rest we had to have hauled off.

The garage looked great for a while. Then we noticed that we were starting to collect a large quantity of grocery bags. Paper and plastic. And they were starting to make the garage look terrible again.

So we decided to start carrying our own canvas bags with us to the market and use them over and over again instead of getting new ones from the store each time. This is not as easy as it sounds. Several times in the beginning we would forget to put the bags in the car. And after several rainy events of leaving the store to go back to the car to get the bags, we now remember to bring them with us.

A few days ago the light bulb in the stairway that goes from our office up to our penthouse apartment burned out. The only way to change this bulb is for me to stand on my tippy-toes on the fourth step from the top with Lynn standing in front of me to keep me from falling down the final nine stairs. I'm over six feet tall and I don't do well with heights. (see our Spotlight on the Town of Hadley)

We replaced the bulb with a long life energy saving 60 watt sort of odd shaped light bulb looking thing that is supposed to last 5 years and save us $27.60. The hard part was paying almost $8.00 for a light bulb. But if it saves me all that money, saves some energy, and saves me from having to change the thing while suffering incredible vertigo, it is worth it!

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