You know the old joke – How do you eat an elephant? One of our early days here, James asked instead, “how do you eat a whale?” A whale does feel like a more appropriate analogy for our situation, but that still doesn’t quite capture the complexity of the task, because there is a definite If You Give a Mouse a Cookie-esque element of chaos. Like, you try to do one thing, but on the way to that thing, you see another thing that needs doing…then you get lost looking for a thing you need to do the second thing, but find a thing you needed for the first thing, and something for that other thing you started yesterday, that you completely forgot you had started. So, anyway…

For me the first bite was obvious; we couldn’t live here if we didn’t have places for our own stuff. I told my aunt that before we moved in, we needed three bedrooms empty. So, starting 4th of July weekend, combinations of the four of us came here for a few days at a time, sorting, downsizing, organizing and moving things.

Choosing the first room was easy – the small bedroom on the second floor. This room was traditionally dubbed ‘the blue room,’ for obvious reasons. It was unoccupied, small, and one of the less-full spaces. However, we couldn’t even start in that room, because there weren’t places to put the things we took out – tile game in effect!

At my aunt’s suggestion, we started in the front parlor downstairs. It was not terribly full, and what was in there was haphazardly placed, so it wasn’t too big of a project to consolidate things into corners so we could then fill the room with other stuff.

While we were working on the parlor, it rained pretty heavily, and it quickly became apparent that the ceiling above the landing of the main staircase was leaking…badly. Efforts quickly shifted gears to empty the landing, which was full of mostly books, many already water damaged. Fortunately, with the work we had already done in the parlor, we had somewhere to put the things from the landing that were still salvageable. This actually had the added bonus of making the stairs more passable, so yay 🎉🤷🏻‍♀️?

After moving all those books, I was sweaty and gross and realized I needed a shower. While attempting to shower, I realized that the shower was so disgusting that I didn’t want to put my bare feet in it. Cleaning the bathroom became my top priority. As a working bathroom, it was not nearly so full of stuff as it might have been, but it definitely had things stashed in corners and cupboards! I took everything out that wasn’t attached, scrubbed the whole room ceiling to floor, including washing the glass on top of the cabinet, the picture on the wall and every light fixture…and of course don’t forget the toilet 🚽🙃! 

Once the bathroom was clean (two days later 🫠) I actually felt good in the house for the first time since I started coming this summer. When I showered that evening, I took off my shoes and stamped on the clean floor like a toddler playing in the mud 😂

While I was working in the bathroom, Cindy sorted in the blue room. We were able to get nearly everything in boxes and bins. That I could then put in the corner of the hallway that I had emptied earlier by bringing its previous contents to the front parlor…and when you finish bringing boxes and bins to the front parlor, you are definitely going to want a cookie 🍪🤣