Hi, and welcome to Clearwater Village. I'm glad you've decided to pull up a chair and join us. This post is where you can comfortably post your first 'comment' to get you started! If you're ready, introduce yourself and share: - your name and city/country - if you know it, the story behind your name - and your beverage(s) of choice! Yes I believe you can have more than one, after all for me it depends on what time of day it is! And if you haven't already, go now to the Classroom where your Welcome Guide is ready for you. It's being revised regularly so if there's anything you're not clear on, or think would be great to add, let me know! We look forward to e-meeting you here!

On our journey of life we accumulate 'things' - be they necessities (like that coffee cup you love!), or memorabilia (like the gift that really hit the mark and reminds you of someone special), or simply useful items you use every day, or would if you were stationary and not nomadic. In the last 16 years I've been through many downsizing moves as the kids have slowly spread their wings and taken off on their own journeys. The last downsizing was when I left Australia in 2019 to work in Japan for 20 months. Well we all know what happened in 2020, and so shifted everything for me. By January 2021 I became someone with a storage unit! And almost all my worldly possessions (packed by others in my apartment in Tokyo and shipped back while I moved to the UK) went into storage, where they've been ever since! And the other things? Left with daughter? Well she also ended up moving to UK, and so it went into storage too. So to shorten this saga, I'm currently culling - emptied the 2nd storage unit yesterday and now understand why she didn't 'dump' it all - it's books, photos, crystalware, full dinner set, cantina of silver cutlery, precious photo frames and gifts. How do you cull this stuff? Have you ever had to do this? Were you able to get rid of the beautiful handmade 'Fairy Godmother' doll given to you by a friend you'd had for years on the other side of the world and who passed before you had the chance to actually meet, even through video because we didn't have that ability back then? Yes, I'm a hopeless sentimental! But I want to know how you might have managed it, culled those items?

One of the fun things in Skool are the GIFs! This is for you if you're a Skool newbie, and we were all that at one stage! Whether you are posting or leavng a comment on a post, you can add a GIF. Take a look down the bottom there, you'll see GIF somewhere around and click on it. A little window that looks just like my first pic down there will pop up. It has a search box at the top and you can have some fun typing in whatever you'd like to find, be it 'hello' or 'welcome' or 'running' or 'on fire' or 'whatever' if you want. To select it simply click on the one you like with your mouse, or tap on the screen if you're on your phone. Just a heads-up, sometimes on my phone it can be a bit awkward and take two goes to select, but it's worth giving it a go! Go on, go try it out. You can post one or a few (I can't remember the maximum)! I've seen whole threads that have evolved simply with GIFs being used to communicate, and it can be fun and interesting to follow along or participate. Give it a try - see what you can find and post them here. I love the laughing ones, and this young fella has me grinning every time I see him and his gorgeous belly laugh!