House Cleaning
Oct. 4th, 2010 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuI'm doing a lot of house cleaning lately. And by "cleaning" I don't mean dusting and vacuuming. I rarely if ever do the former and only do the latter about once a week, at best. No, I'm talking about "stooping, grabbing, grunting, lifting, carrying, tossing" style cleaning.
We're selling our house. Or we're going to sell it, as soon as we get it into shape. Getting the house into salable shape is like working one of those little puzzles composed of a bunch of plastic squares inside a plastic frame. It has an image printed on it and you have to move the pieces around to get them into the proper order. It seems simple at first except that you invariably have to disorganize part of the puzzle to get one out-of-place piece back into play.
Last weekend we rented a dumpster. Six cubic yards. In retrospect, not big enough. Ten or even twenty cubic yards would have been better. On the other hand, by the time passersby had picked through it, I was able to compress the remaining crap down enough that it didn't overflow the edges. We'll have to rent another dumpster before we're done.
We filled that first dumpster with junk from the garage and the basement. The garage is now (mostly) filled with stuff we either intend to keep, or try to move in a yard sale. But it's nearly full again, already. The basement is one quarter empty now. I spent all morning clearing out that section. Note: most of that stuff is still in the basement, it's just been moved closer to the door, where it's piled up ready for hauling away when we rent the second dumpster. Some of the rest of the basement has been sorted already (into keep/sell/trash categories), but I still need to sort through at least another quarter of the basement. Most of that will be junk, based on preliminary inspections, but I have to look more closely to be sure there's nothing there we'll want to hang onto.*
While we were filling the dumpster, a fellow driving by stopped and began going through it. He asked if I minded and I said no--he was welcome to anything he wanted to take. If we'd decided to trash something, I didn't care if people walked off with it. He liberated several old pieces of electronics, and various other items. He was driving a pickup and I could see various appliances and tools in it, so I gather he made a habit of that sort of thing. So I asked him if he was interested in an old, non-working gasoline-powered lawn mower. He was, so we went and retrieved it from the back of the garage.
I (and Twoson and a friend of his) resumed ferrying stuff to the dumpster. The guy comes to me and asks whether I wanted to hang onto the transmission. See, there's an old transmission on the floor of the garage--which he'd spotted, apparently. It's been there since before I married my lovely and talented wife and moved in here. I'd figured I'd eventually have to pay someone to cart it away. "Not at all!" says I. "If you want it, you're welcome to it!" So I helped him load it into our wheelbarrow and he happily carted it away and returned the wheelbarrow. My only regret now is that we have an old, non-working upright freezer in the basement--if I'd thought to offer that to him too, we'd probably be rid of it as well. He was polite and thankful for the stuff he obtained (and I thanked him for taking it), and he didn't leave trash strewn about when he was done--which is more than I can say for most of the other passerby who rooted around in the dumpster over the weekend.
I just got back from making a run to the Metro Hazardous Waste disposal station. I collected all the old paint, paint thinner, cleansers, motor oil (from god knows how many years ago now--nothing I ever bought), a bucket of kerosene (or so the label said, though I told the disposal folks I had no idea whether that was what was really in it, when they asked), and other stuff and drove out to get rid of it. Didn't cost me a dime, which was good.
Between cleaning up part of the basement and making the disposal run, Twoson and I went running, as usual on Monday morning. So it's been a busy morning.
*If it hasn't gotten too musty or moldy. It's a basement in Oregon. In an old house. Snippy and I have both tossed stuff that we might otherwise have kept, save that it's been down there so long we can't have it back in the house (especially with her allergies).
We're selling our house. Or we're going to sell it, as soon as we get it into shape. Getting the house into salable shape is like working one of those little puzzles composed of a bunch of plastic squares inside a plastic frame. It has an image printed on it and you have to move the pieces around to get them into the proper order. It seems simple at first except that you invariably have to disorganize part of the puzzle to get one out-of-place piece back into play.
Last weekend we rented a dumpster. Six cubic yards. In retrospect, not big enough. Ten or even twenty cubic yards would have been better. On the other hand, by the time passersby had picked through it, I was able to compress the remaining crap down enough that it didn't overflow the edges. We'll have to rent another dumpster before we're done.
We filled that first dumpster with junk from the garage and the basement. The garage is now (mostly) filled with stuff we either intend to keep, or try to move in a yard sale. But it's nearly full again, already. The basement is one quarter empty now. I spent all morning clearing out that section. Note: most of that stuff is still in the basement, it's just been moved closer to the door, where it's piled up ready for hauling away when we rent the second dumpster. Some of the rest of the basement has been sorted already (into keep/sell/trash categories), but I still need to sort through at least another quarter of the basement. Most of that will be junk, based on preliminary inspections, but I have to look more closely to be sure there's nothing there we'll want to hang onto.*
While we were filling the dumpster, a fellow driving by stopped and began going through it. He asked if I minded and I said no--he was welcome to anything he wanted to take. If we'd decided to trash something, I didn't care if people walked off with it. He liberated several old pieces of electronics, and various other items. He was driving a pickup and I could see various appliances and tools in it, so I gather he made a habit of that sort of thing. So I asked him if he was interested in an old, non-working gasoline-powered lawn mower. He was, so we went and retrieved it from the back of the garage.
I (and Twoson and a friend of his) resumed ferrying stuff to the dumpster. The guy comes to me and asks whether I wanted to hang onto the transmission. See, there's an old transmission on the floor of the garage--which he'd spotted, apparently. It's been there since before I married my lovely and talented wife and moved in here. I'd figured I'd eventually have to pay someone to cart it away. "Not at all!" says I. "If you want it, you're welcome to it!" So I helped him load it into our wheelbarrow and he happily carted it away and returned the wheelbarrow. My only regret now is that we have an old, non-working upright freezer in the basement--if I'd thought to offer that to him too, we'd probably be rid of it as well. He was polite and thankful for the stuff he obtained (and I thanked him for taking it), and he didn't leave trash strewn about when he was done--which is more than I can say for most of the other passerby who rooted around in the dumpster over the weekend.
I just got back from making a run to the Metro Hazardous Waste disposal station. I collected all the old paint, paint thinner, cleansers, motor oil (from god knows how many years ago now--nothing I ever bought), a bucket of kerosene (or so the label said, though I told the disposal folks I had no idea whether that was what was really in it, when they asked), and other stuff and drove out to get rid of it. Didn't cost me a dime, which was good.
Between cleaning up part of the basement and making the disposal run, Twoson and I went running, as usual on Monday morning. So it's been a busy morning.
*If it hasn't gotten too musty or moldy. It's a basement in Oregon. In an old house. Snippy and I have both tossed stuff that we might otherwise have kept, save that it's been down there so long we can't have it back in the house (especially with her allergies).