Bright Yellow Suitcase

First things first.

We are having a parade of 6 open houses in Eastpointe Country Club this Sunday.  Please call Victoria Lorusso at 561-531-4977 or Victoria@EchoFineProperties.com for details.

As luck would have it, the bright yellow suitcase was lifted off the conveyor belt quickly as it was the first luggage out. We were exhausted from our honeymoon and swooped into a yellow taxi matching our bright yellow luggage to return to our downtown condo.  Leon Love and Willie Wood, the doormen of 420 East Ohio, opened the entry and shook their heads as they always did, nicknaming us the couple with lots of stuff.

When it comes to luggage, I’ve typically been ahead of the curve.  Back in the 1990’s fresh out of college, I used to fly 35 weeks a year working for my dad’s home furnishing textile converting business.  Western Textile was based in Chicago. I lived downtown and would hail a taxi at 4:30am.  I had 2 giant sample cases on wheels filled with fabric samples and I was always over the 60-pound weight limit along with the bright yellow suitcase. I’d slip the porter a $20 bill (the Chicago way) when I got to O’Hare curbside at 5:00am and my black oversized sample bags along with other pieces of luggage would arrive at LaGuardia safe and sound.

Back then I had to be super organized and super speedy… and colorful luggage was my trick. The problem on my honeymoon was that when we got home, I reverted to being lazy and didn’t unpack the colorful yellow bag for 2 days.  When we unpacked, we found that it was filled with someone else’s belongings.  Yes, someone also had followed my novel idea of colorful luggage and got the same exact piece.  He wasn’t happy when I returned it and did the switcheroo, but such is life.

As a kid I was always disorganized with papers stuffed in my childhood room from top to bottom. So later in life, I had to become over organized in business to turn a weakness into a strength. My dry cleaning for example is put out in a bag each Monday morning and returned the following Monday.  I figure if the drive to the dry-cleaning store and waiting in line takes 15 minutes there and back, that’s a half hour a week.  Multiply that by 4 times a month and you have two hours.  At 12 months a year it’s a real 24 hours out of my life dealing with dry cleaning.  Money is made saving the minutes and seconds, and at Echo we have systems and time savers in place throughout our business that massively benefits our clients. We get stuff done!

I’ve been writing Jeff’s Journal articles since the early days of the pandemic. I also find myself needing the articles to send to clients. Each JJ is really a story on how to handle a situation whether it’s staging a home, how seasonality works, or in what manner pricing a home matters. At times I find myself searching for past articles, and the time-wasting takes me back to thoughts of my messy childhood room!

So, we redesigned our blog and made a Jeff’s Journal home page. Now, all past journals are on the same page. On the right-hand side for desktop and down below on mobile, you can also easily see other pertinent search pages on our website with just a glance. And finally, all Jeff’s Journals are now set in categories. If you are thinking about selling and want to get tips on staging, or considering the best time to put your home on the market, or wondering how homesteading works, it’s now all broken down into 13 categories. There is even a search option to just type in a keyword and it will show you relevant articles. Now if only it would remind me where I left my yellow iPhone.

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