Cleaning House

As I mentioned (I think), mom was away all of last week so it was the three of us holding down the fort, which meant that as the day of her return approached, we had to get the house ready. This meant some cleaning of the house, barn, and basement, but also some garden and yard prep. Truth be told the house really wasn't that bad, we'd been so busy that we didn't have time to sit around the house and make a mess of things. The barn and the basement, on the other hand, were a different story. They are, after all, working spaces, and when things are getting done, messes can be made, especially when you're a slob like myself.

The barn was particularly affected because as you may well know, I've been trying to put insulation and do all sorts of other good things in there. Tools, wood scraps, insulation, nails, dust, etc. You name it, it was there. Normally I would wait until the last minute and spend all day and night cleaning, but this time around I struck early and slowly started organizing things early on, and by the end of the week it was looking pretty good. Bear in mind, I'm still doing work in there, so it can't be spotless, but it sure was an improvement. So much so that the kids were impressed, and believe me, it takes a lot for me to impress them.

The basement was also a bit of a disaster, mainly because I split kindling down there and it makes an mess of things. I also used to use it as a work space, but have since moved to the barn and the outdoors, though the mess remained. In order to facilitate the cleaning, I spent some time powering through the kindling and managed to finish it for the coming winter - five trash cans full. I then stacked the extra wood and swept like a madman until it was clean. I have to confess, it does look nice.

The final thing was to address the great outdoors. Cleaning up around the house was easy enough because you can just stash everything in the woods, but the garden was a challenge. I am not a gardener (I just play one on TV), and getting the garden into shape required some blood, sweat and tears. The kids were an amazing help cleaning the weeds out, and I focused on the tomato plants, getting rid of the dead leaves, of which there were many, and making sure the fruit was off the ground. It took about three days but by the end, the garden was looking presentable and might even meet mom's high standards. We shall see.

All in all it went okay. I couldn't have done it without the kid's, and thankfully they were more than willing to help. Best of all, it's nice for mom to come home to a clean house. Let's see how long it lasts.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to Dave Maschka 52 for the pic.