Spring Cleaning-2.2 Years Past Due

Had a big day today, productive in areas other than writing and web work, although the result will most likely improve productivity in those areas as well. Tomorrow will be even bigger and more productive as Ed will be helping me with things I can't do by myself. We are preparing to exchange the mattress, box springs and Hollywood frame of our bed with a set from Ed's grandmother's house on Sunday afternoon. There is a lot of prep work involved to be ready for that. I have explained elsewhere how events have conspired to make regular cleaning of this room difficult over the last three years. I used to do a deep cleaning of it twice a year in spring and fall when my in-law's took their three day trips to the coast. But for the last three years, I have been spending those days as well as all race season Saturdays with Ed's grandmother once she could not be left alone. Except for the fall of 2005 when I went to be with my own family when my Dad passed on.

It shouldn't be hard to imagine the state a room can get into after nearly three years of only superficial cleaning. A room shared by two adults and two cats on leashes. I used to pull all of the movable stuff out of the room, dust, wipe, vac and put it back together. It would take over twelve hours if I did it without breaks. Which is why I liked to have the three days so I could take rest breaks and do it right. In the last three years though we have added a great deal of volume to the contents of this room. I swear I don't understand how a couple who couldn't afford to move into their own place could still manage to accumulate so much stuff. We moved in here with a duffel bag, a pilot case, a backpack and two cats in their crates in August of 2001. I think it would take a small van to move us out now.

I got started on the project this morning after Ed left for work. Instead of laying down at my usual time between three and six AM, I had coffee with Ed and then started working at the things I could do without moving a lot of stuff out of the room and without Ed's help to lift things down. The biggest part of this chore was the laundry--collecting, sorting, loading and unloading machines and folding and putting away. While waiting on the loads, I did clutter patrol, throwing out and putting away of items which took no longer than a second to decide about, and some rearranging and organizing of surfaces.

Either I was going too fast or I had one of my addlepated moments at one point though. I was picking up stuff that accumulates daily around the cats dishes and the litter box--food pellets and crumbs, litter pellets and...let's just say Merlin does a vigorous litter box dance. So I was picking stuff up, using a tissue to protect my hands and dropping it into a plastic shopping bag I had designated for garbage. Or so I thought. I discovered over an hour later that I had grabbed the wrong white plastic bag off the bed and instead had put all that nasty stuff into the bag I store my white, summer slip on shoes. OK altogether now.... Eeeeeewwwww!

Even though most of the stuff I handled today will have to be handled again tomorrow, I hope I have made the chore easier in the long run. Besides I hope to get some before and after pics of my 'office' and a couple other corners of the room. But not really before I tackled the mess. Just before we start tearing it down for good in order to put it back together in a much different and hopefully better configuration. I want the pics to depict the way it was meant to look not the way it has looked for most of the last eight months. For besides the bed, we are getting some shelving Ed's dad has removed from his shed to make room for stuff he is moving over from his Mom's property. So good bye to the precarious tower of cardboard boxes since I bought those two sets of books at the library spring of 2005.

Well, I suppose I should be wrapping this up as the whole point of not laying down this morning was to switch my hours so that I could be up by eight tomorrow morning to direct Ed as he takes down the boxes full of books and notebooks and piles them on the bed. I would have to do it by taking every thing out of the boxes first. The plan is to pile everything on my side of the bed onto the bed. Then pull everything out from under the bed (this is the scary part!! two cats remember?) Then vac the floor on my side of the bed and the foot of the bed (the other two sides are against the walls). Then move in the shelves and get them positioned. All of this before Ed and his folks leave for the race track before two. Then my work really begins. For I have to have that bed cleared for Ed to sleep by eleven.

At least the weather is cooperating. Temps dropped into the mid seventies and high sixties today and are supposed to hover there for the next couple of days. Then they expect it to shoot back up into the nineties by the middle of the week. This rubber barometer thing is really wearing me out though, it does a number on my mental acuity every time it goes up or down. But I am grateful I won't have to do all this physical labor in the heat.