Yesterday my wife and I tackled The Dreaded Garage. We started at 8am and kept going until 8pm. At 8 we called it a day, took showers and ordered pizza delivery.
We made a huge dent in the mess but there’s more to do so we’ll back at it today… after sleeping in a little because we’re so sore!
What’s your project(s)?
No specific project but I’ve decided to get rid of stuff I don’t use, like my wedding china.
I’m retiring this summer. So I keep telling myself I’ll have time to declutter.
Project #1: My workbench is buried under 100 lbs of Stuff To Do SOMEthing With. So my wife agreed to let me move her Christmas ornaments and present-wrapping materials out of the adjacent area.
If I throw away 99 lbs of that Stuff That I’ll Realistically Never Do SOMEthing With, I’ll have a workspace!
And as a bonus, whenever I tackle a huge mess like this, I find enough fun miscellany that it feels like I’m getting paid to do it. I was going to buy a pocket watercolor set, but found my old one in a bag of hinges. Yay!
Warning to Bullitt:
Anything left over in that garage starts to BREED as soon as you turn out the light and close the door.
Our project is to get rid of the ubiquitous mouse poop. The little shits keep finding new ways to invade, and that is NOT ALLOWED. They have all of the Great Outdoors beyond the walls of my home.
The exterminator is scheduled to show up tomorrow. I want them to DIE.
~VOW
My wife and I are getting ready to move. To a smaller apartment from a house. The painful part is what comes and what we get rid of. Especially from among thousands of books. Yesterday we did a superficial cleaning out of the garage. For weeks, we have been culling books. It will end some day. The apartment is bought and the house is sold, so it has to end.
When we made The Big Move from SCal, I, too had zillions of books.
They don’t sell at a yard sale.
I donated them to a Senior Center. I even included a set of encyclopedias and a big ass dictionary. I know everything went to a good home!
~VOW
Yeah, I can get by with so little. I’ve purposely avoided “collecting” anything except experiences.
Except when it comes to books. Now, I THINK I could pare books down to a couple of shelves of “beloved” ones that I might not be able to find again. For many of the others, I’d be willing to borrow them from the library or get a Kindle if I had to read them again… just not sure what to do with manymanymany boxes of comics.
Reading those online, esp. Golden/Silver Age (with bad rotogravure printing and yellowing, smelly paper) is just not the same!
Help!
Hmmm. Comics?
I assume there is a Museum of Comic-ness?
~VOW
There is in San Francisco, but it’s Comic Art framed on the walls, not the individual comics.
I’d donate multiple boxes of comics if there was somewhere they’d be appreciated.
My kids sneer at them, and say “That’s what old white guys read.” That would keep me from giving them to a school or children’s hospital… besides, I might have to do some editing. Maybe hold back the comics where Hit Girl (a 10-yr old) eviscerates mobsters in graphic (novel) detail.
Ain’t that the truth! That’s why we got rid of everything. Pretty much. Freecycle is great. Goodwill too. And we hauled a lot of garbage to the dump too.
We did a lot this weekend! There’s more to do but it’s not a massive amount of work like it was, it’s small, manageable tasks.
Good luck with your critter situation, VOW.
I usually like to do “spring cleaning” in the fall because spring brings so much crud into the house. But there were a few rooms I didn’t get to last fall - I just fizzled out. So I have the master bedroom and the “extra” living room that I need to deep clean. That means pulling the furniture away from the walls and vacuuming, dusting everything, cleaning the windows and then cleaning the laminate floors really good. I cleaned out and organized one of the closets this weekend. So that was a start. The problem is that some of the rooms really should be painted, but UGH I don’t feel like getting into that.
With all of the extra sunlight, we have this time of year, I can really see the dust and grime. All of the doors are speckled with dog slobber/boogers from when they shake. YUCK
Allow me to be the first to say it:
That’s snot nice!
~VOW
Where to begin…
I have a few gallons of paint waiting to get on my office walls and the kitchen walls. I want to repaint the bathroom, too. Living room is a “needs to be done”, but it can wait. All ceilings need a fresh coat, too. I’m the kind of person who, when I get ready to paint, do a deep cleaning of the room. That way, when it’s painted it’s also super clean - like a brand new room.
I need to epoxy the breezeway floor. After it was rebuilt, I’ve been delayed on putting up the baseboards until I could finish the floor. Winter didn’t help, of course, since the floor needs to cure, not freeze. In order to be able to epoxy the floor, it needs a good sort through.
Gut the basement. Before my daughter moved out, the basement became the store-all for SO much. When she did move out, she didn’t take everything she stored down there. Hell, there’s stuff down there from when my nephew lived here 12 years ago.
We’re cleaning out the spare bedroom and the “back closet” here. (The master bedroom closet has another closet in the back, in case you were wondering.) Both contain boxes and totes that pretty much haven’t been touched in about 12 years; we reached the point after moving in that we were just tired of sorting through older things, and just packed them away. I’ve handed over boxes and boxes of “collectibles” to a friend who has been selling them (she needs the money), one Jeep-load has been taken to the donation center, and many other things have headed to the trash. I still have a large pile of old income tax stuff to deal with (some of it dating back to 1979!). The spare bedroom is close to being functional again; we haven’t really started on the back closet at all.
We can’t decide what to do with my grandmother’s china, or the mismatched set of teacups that came out of my great grandparent’s house.
I haven’t done basic stuff like floor cleaning of any kind in ages. I know I should.
Help me get motivated to do it!
Oh, my kitchen faucet is worn out…not leaking, but its design has allowed water to run down the sprayer hose, which has gradually corroded the base. There are barely enough threads left on the mounting hardware to hold it in place now. It should be so simple – I’ve replaced faucets plenty of times – but the kitchen counters are just slightly over standard height, and the faucet is situated behind a double sink in a corner, making the whole setup too high and too cramped for me to reach easily. 
Pretty much done over the past week or so:
Windows and screens, inside and out.
Front porch, rails and ceiling.
Rear deck and furniture scrubbed of tree slime, and power washed.
Window blinds and curtains.
All floors, rugs and carpets with The Mighty Hoover steam cleaner.
Surfaces dusted.
Furniture wiped down.
Kitchen counters cleaned.
Sinks, toilets scoured.
Garage cleaned of sawdust and other crud.
It’s exhausting, and we get to do it again in the fall.
My spring cleaning is coming on the tail of a renovation to my kitchen and making a bathroom and closet. I had my ducts cleaned to get rid of construction dust and have to reorganize and consolidate.
I am going through far too much stuff that I have. Charity will be getting lots of stuff.
No, it’s snot!
A big tree next door came down and did a lot of damage to our yard (and banged up the neighbor on the other side’s cars).
I knew the tree was leaning and about to go so I was holding off getting someone in to fill and Bobcat some sinkholes and other problem areas in the yard. Lest the tree came down after and someone thought that the work caused the tree to come down.
So lots of yard damage from the tree company’s Bobcat, etc.
Time to call someone. It won’t be easy.