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On a beautiful Florida morning, sunshine bursts through the windows of your motel room. You bound out of bed and grab your camera. Breakfast forgotten, you go for a long aimless walk under a cloudless sky, snapping pictures of egrets, pelicans, banyan trees, and hibiscus.

On impulse, you follow a path through a wooded area and emerge at the construction site of a new development near a marina. You need a bathroom and enter the sales office. On your way out, you look at model villas and fall in love with the place. Two days later, you and your spouse have a signed contract to buy one of the units. You're as excited as a small child. Totally unexpected, but you're moving to Florida!

Back home, in the house you've lived in for 40 years, the "fun" begins. What to take along and what to discard or sell? Eight rooms full of furniture, collectibles, mementos, books, artwork, and clothing must be condensed to fit into a two-bedroom villa. You wander through familiar rooms and, for the moment, decide to take everything.

As soon as a "for sale" sign is placed on the front lawn, moving company representatives descend upon you like a horde of locusts, each one offering a free estimate. Thousands of dollars, they all say. The numbers make your heart flutter. Like Fagan in the movie Oliver, you start singing, "I think I better think it out again." It becomes apparent that you must get rid of some stuff.

Your children are invited to take anything they want. Except for a seder plate and a menorah, nobody wants anything. It's "not their style." You urge them to take the piano but you are informed that your grandchildren are more into guitars and drums.

Triage is the way to go. You make three lists - to take, to sell, to discard. Your bedroom set is 40 years old. Over time, the walnut finish oxidized into several different shades. Broken drawer pulls were replaced with haphazard choices, and the children carved little initials on the dresser. Donate to charity.

The living room sofa is a shade of olive green that makes you gag, although it was the "in" thing when you bought it. Donate to the Salvation Army. The lamps belong in a bordello. Sell them - if you can.

The dining room set is still magnificent - oval table, breakfront, carved chairs. No glass top table has the beauty of pecan wood. Memories of parties and holiday celebrations flood your mind. You remember a New Year's Eve party on a freezing night when the pipes burst. You turned off the water until a plumber could come two days later. The result: a mob in the house with no operable toilets. No amount of money can induce you to part with the dining room set. Take it.

You look at the kitchen and bathrooms. The wallpaper you've taken for granted suddenly jumps out at you in bizarre patterns on "wet-look" paper. How did you live with this stuff all those years? You feel sorry for the new owners. Undoubtedly, they will rip it out even before they unpack.

In the kitchen cabinets and breakfront are enough dishes, pitchers, glasses, tablecloths, and serving dishes to equip a restaurant. You know that Florida's state bird is jokingly called "the early bird," so you are certain that you do not need all the china, utensils, and linens. You will eat out like everyone else does. You've never used the demitasse set. Stemware, fondue maker, one-of-a-kind cups and saucers, as well as an ancient set of Harvard Classics may sell.

You turn to closets where you find bar mitzvah albums, old report cards, dresses, and gowns worn to weddings whose brides and grooms have long since divorced, and an ironing board and iron unused since permanent press was invented. In a suitcase, you discover three men's polyester leisure suits, a Nehru jacket, and a mouton lamb fur coat. Is there a museum that would want these things? On a shelf behind old handbags, there is a small, unlabeled carton. Inside are treasures: Love letters, a tin wedding ring you wore when you and your husband took a clandestine trip to the Catskills when you were engaged, and a tissue paper wrapped black negligee you wore on your honeymoon.

You organize and advertise a massive garage sale. An hour before opening time, when you are in the shower, an antique dealer already rings the doorbell. Customers swarm over the lawn and driveway looking for bargains. They buy the strangest things, like clocks that don't work and a three-legged table. They haggle over the price of each item. You are delighted to dispose of the snow blower you will never need again. At the last moment, you decide not to sell the rocking chair in which you nursed your first child. The potential buyer stalks off in a huff, a $5 bargain lost. Somebody actually buys an orthopedic corset and a hand-operated meat grinder.

At last the weekend is over. The house sells shortly afterward to a young couple with a toddler and another child on the way. You overhear plans to "update" everything. First on their agenda is wallpaper removal and painting (the living room and dining room are the same disgusting shade of green as the sofa and carpet.) You and your husband stifle giggles over this.

At last it's over and you're out. Are there tears and emotional scenes on the way to your new home in Florida? Surprisingly not. Only fond memories. You look forward to a joyous new beginning full of new dreams and possibilities without ice, snow, or cold toilet seats.

Rosenstrauch, an award-winning columnist, lives in Boynton Beach, Fla.