More or less. Mama and I cleaned out the garage this past Saturday. It was embarrassingly piled with boxes and, depending on how tight the car was put in, the path was little better than a goat path. (Try navigating that with a sloppy-full bucket of wet chicken feed in one hand and a bucket of water in the other--while wearing rubber boots. Amazingly, I never sloshed nor tripped.)
At this current moment, the garage will not hold the car--but only because Monday and Tuesday were dedicated to cleaning out the basement (the door into said third story is in the garage). The basement leaks...and we have a wood burning furnace...and we dump the wood through a window in the winter...and food gets stored down there--both canned and not [like winter squash]...and I think you may be able to have something of a vision of the wood chip/ash dust over everything. We didn't have an over abundance of mold...but there was a little. That is why I, yours truly, who has a high level of mold already in my system, wore the respirator most of the time I was down there. (I took it off a couple of times because the bridge of my nose was hurting.)
I started out yesterday by scooping up several five gallon buckets full of wood chippy stuff and hauling that out of the basement. I cleaned out the furnace--no need to let ashes sit in it all summer--and took the last two buckets of ashes out for the season. No knee deep snow to wade through to get to the garden either! Yippee!! Daddy and I cleaned out the old oil room (which is the room the wood lands in when slid down the chute during the cold days) yesterday--buckets of paint...the wheat sprouting apparatus...a wooden pallet. These items mostly emerged from the basement via the window. The wheat sprouting thingy, I think, was the only thing that had to come out by means of the stairway.
The next thing we did was move the fabric off the "dread sled" (something along the lines of a stretcher Daddy built a few years back that was supposed to be used in case of a tornado emergency to get Grandpa into the basement...it was never actually tried out.) I believe there is somewhere's along 9 rubbermaid boxes of varying sizes full of fabric. In my own not necessarily so humble opinion, I do not think that we need to go fabric shopping anytime soon...I wonder if we can make it somewhat more accessible. We put six of them into the next room, up on top of a series of cinder block and wood slab shelves. The other three, plus the boxes holding Savannah and I's china got moved to the other side of the furnace. Mama and I took the china to the garage this afternoon, but that's getting ahead of myself.
Mama, Daddy, and Savannah went to a market meeting for the upcoming Farmer's Market, so I had Katherine help me take the dread sled and another pallet out of the basement. I then swept again (the whole basement basically) before coming up and washing my now nasty filthy hair. Katherine had been going to make supper, but I ended up fixing our omelettes. She was washing up dishes from a kimchi/kraut making spree, so I didn't mind. I really would rather make supper than wash up the food processor.
This morning, after washing eleven dozen eggs (can you tell I didn't get to them on Saturday--and neither did anybody else? :D), I returned to the basement. Daddy was already down there and was doing something...I think it was clearing off the rest of the wall adjoining the one the dread sled had sat against. I just remembered that this was when the boxes with the china got moved (the first time). Anyway, before lunch, we had that wall cleaned off and the "oil room" scrubbed.
After lunch, Daddy and Katherine went off to town--Katherine had one more blood test. Mama joined me downstairs and we proceeded to haul a good deal of stuff up the stairs so that we could clean the entire furnace room more efficiently. The scrubbing and water sweeping commenced!
At one point, Mama dropped the hose...and it landed on the spray nozzle lever...and she "threatened" to squirt me for laughing because she got soaked. I couldn't help it...it was funny!!
By the time Daddy and Katherine got home, we had pretty well gotten the floor cleaned up. I continued to piddle around while Daddy fixed up a new landing spot for the remaining coal. I mostly just stood around like an ornamental bump on the wall (a rather odd looking one with that "gas mask" on my face) while he transferred the bags. By that point, I was tired enough that I probably would have had a great deal of difficulty lifting one of the bag. (I started out the day tired. Lyme again. Thankfully, my stomach has not been in rebellion today like it was much of yesterday.)
I went to get a snack (it almost always helps) and I guess he hauled out the old pallet while I was munching on carrots because when I got back down there, he had just about finished scrubbing the floor where the pallet had sat. I helped with sweeping the excess water down the sump pump and then announced that, "I'm going to feed the chickens early and call it quits." There wasn't much more to be done until the floor dries anyway. I imagine, therefore, that "stuff" will get returned to the basement tomorrow, the bedstead removed (it has mold on it too) and that area spot cleaned...
Savannah is currently fixing supper and me, myself, and I shall happily consume said supper when it is done. :) In the meantime, maybe I can push myself to do something else useful...then again...maybe I'll pick up my book and read a little. I have to remind myself often enough that reading is not a waste of time.
Until my next post then...fare-thee-well!!
At this current moment, the garage will not hold the car--but only because Monday and Tuesday were dedicated to cleaning out the basement (the door into said third story is in the garage). The basement leaks...and we have a wood burning furnace...and we dump the wood through a window in the winter...and food gets stored down there--both canned and not [like winter squash]...and I think you may be able to have something of a vision of the wood chip/ash dust over everything. We didn't have an over abundance of mold...but there was a little. That is why I, yours truly, who has a high level of mold already in my system, wore the respirator most of the time I was down there. (I took it off a couple of times because the bridge of my nose was hurting.)
I started out yesterday by scooping up several five gallon buckets full of wood chippy stuff and hauling that out of the basement. I cleaned out the furnace--no need to let ashes sit in it all summer--and took the last two buckets of ashes out for the season. No knee deep snow to wade through to get to the garden either! Yippee!! Daddy and I cleaned out the old oil room (which is the room the wood lands in when slid down the chute during the cold days) yesterday--buckets of paint...the wheat sprouting apparatus...a wooden pallet. These items mostly emerged from the basement via the window. The wheat sprouting thingy, I think, was the only thing that had to come out by means of the stairway.
The next thing we did was move the fabric off the "dread sled" (something along the lines of a stretcher Daddy built a few years back that was supposed to be used in case of a tornado emergency to get Grandpa into the basement...it was never actually tried out.) I believe there is somewhere's along 9 rubbermaid boxes of varying sizes full of fabric. In my own not necessarily so humble opinion, I do not think that we need to go fabric shopping anytime soon...I wonder if we can make it somewhat more accessible. We put six of them into the next room, up on top of a series of cinder block and wood slab shelves. The other three, plus the boxes holding Savannah and I's china got moved to the other side of the furnace. Mama and I took the china to the garage this afternoon, but that's getting ahead of myself.
Mama, Daddy, and Savannah went to a market meeting for the upcoming Farmer's Market, so I had Katherine help me take the dread sled and another pallet out of the basement. I then swept again (the whole basement basically) before coming up and washing my now nasty filthy hair. Katherine had been going to make supper, but I ended up fixing our omelettes. She was washing up dishes from a kimchi/kraut making spree, so I didn't mind. I really would rather make supper than wash up the food processor.
This morning, after washing eleven dozen eggs (can you tell I didn't get to them on Saturday--and neither did anybody else? :D), I returned to the basement. Daddy was already down there and was doing something...I think it was clearing off the rest of the wall adjoining the one the dread sled had sat against. I just remembered that this was when the boxes with the china got moved (the first time). Anyway, before lunch, we had that wall cleaned off and the "oil room" scrubbed.
After lunch, Daddy and Katherine went off to town--Katherine had one more blood test. Mama joined me downstairs and we proceeded to haul a good deal of stuff up the stairs so that we could clean the entire furnace room more efficiently. The scrubbing and water sweeping commenced!
At one point, Mama dropped the hose...and it landed on the spray nozzle lever...and she "threatened" to squirt me for laughing because she got soaked. I couldn't help it...it was funny!!
By the time Daddy and Katherine got home, we had pretty well gotten the floor cleaned up. I continued to piddle around while Daddy fixed up a new landing spot for the remaining coal. I mostly just stood around like an ornamental bump on the wall (a rather odd looking one with that "gas mask" on my face) while he transferred the bags. By that point, I was tired enough that I probably would have had a great deal of difficulty lifting one of the bag. (I started out the day tired. Lyme again. Thankfully, my stomach has not been in rebellion today like it was much of yesterday.)
I went to get a snack (it almost always helps) and I guess he hauled out the old pallet while I was munching on carrots because when I got back down there, he had just about finished scrubbing the floor where the pallet had sat. I helped with sweeping the excess water down the sump pump and then announced that, "I'm going to feed the chickens early and call it quits." There wasn't much more to be done until the floor dries anyway. I imagine, therefore, that "stuff" will get returned to the basement tomorrow, the bedstead removed (it has mold on it too) and that area spot cleaned...
Savannah is currently fixing supper and me, myself, and I shall happily consume said supper when it is done. :) In the meantime, maybe I can push myself to do something else useful...then again...maybe I'll pick up my book and read a little. I have to remind myself often enough that reading is not a waste of time.
Until my next post then...fare-thee-well!!
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