…and what did it get me 🎶

When I set out to write this installment, I thought this one wouldn’t be too text heavy; that I would mostly let the pictures do the talking…but then as I added pictures, I realize even they don’t really illustrate the amount of work we have done in the last month or so. Part of that is we keep forgetting to take pictures, so the volume of pictures is not proportional to the volume of stuff we’ve moved. We also often neglect to take “before” pics, so our “before”s are often actually mid-project. I also pulled several before images from video footage, so they’re grainy, the lighting is bad, the angles are weird… Suffice it to say, we are not giving you accurate before or during images at this stage of the game. The other thing is due to the sheer volume of stuff we are managing, the “after” images can often, at first glance, appear just as full and cluttered as the before, belying the hours of work emptying, cleaning, downsizing, organizing and repopulating the space.

We officially moved in on Monday September 1st, though we didn’t finish emptying the uhaul until early evening on the 2nd. The move was grueling, and after everything we had done to get to that point, we were exhausted. When we were finally ready to dive into working on the house, the first two orders of business were the kitchen and some basic landscaping. As of this writing September 22 neither of those things are truly finished, but both are quite recently finished enough that we feel comfortable moving on to other projects. Next order of business – unpack and set up our own rooms 🙃

Yes, you read that right – we’ve been living here nearly a month; we have barely unpacked and done nearly nothing to set up bedrooms for ourselves. Maybe it seems like we’ve been slacking…I assure you that is not the case. We have been working our 🫏’s off, in fact. We’ve filled two 10-yard dumpsters with garbage and hauled away a trailer full of brush (just since we’ve lived here, there was more before). We’ve been putting in 10- and 12-hour days, and only taken days “off” to do other things (specifically buying me a car, getting our kids situated with work and school stuff, grocery shopping, that kind of thing). 

Fortunately, the landscaping was straightforward, if extensive. James, with some help, took care of the worst of the overgrowth you see here before we moved in. After we got here, he trimmed the massively overgrown trees, dug out the sidewalks from years of encroaching grass, and cleaned up the front flower beds. What you can’t see it the pictures is the trees on the side of the house were so bad the sidewalk was impassable, the grass and dirt on the front sidewalk was three and four inches thick in places. The small side yard to the left of the house, not pictured at all, was full of Japanese knotweed, which was (improperly) cut down before we moved in, and which James is now attempting to address.

In the kitchen, the tile game was in full force. We started with the lowest hanging fruit – throwing away expired food. So much food. The kitchen and hall pantries were a mix of expired and still good. The kitchen island cupboard, everything in the basement, and several random bins and drawers were all expired.

We threw away things 5, 10, 20 years expired. We threw away cans so rusted through they were empty. Our first 10-yard dumpster was probably about half food.

Pulling food led us down the basement stairs, so since we were working there anyway, it made sense to finish them – we took everything off & out of the stairs and the shelves you see to the left here. We then cleaned thoroughly, sorted, downsized, and organized. Some stuff went in the dumpster, some deeper in the basement, and some back where it was. I was able to make the shelves and landing neat and functional. The stairs themselves are empty and clean, though they could certainly use a coat of paint. I didn’t touch the stuff on the back wall at all. It’s (mostly) fine as is, and so a project for another day.

This cute colorful shelf got the same treatment – empty, clean, repopulate, this time mostly with stuff from the kitchen.

…and this little area in the kitchen, for which I neglected to get a before photo. All of the stuff (including the grime in the bucket 🤣) came out from under here. Last pic is the clean and organized after…the kitchen is James’ domain, so that’s his idea of organized 😒😂 and the pink thing and bin on the right will eventually go somewhere else.

Through these efforts, we were able to get the kitchen empty enough to thoroughly clean the floor, something I’d been wanting to do since July! We were also able to make enough space that a decent percentage of what we use most is put away but still easily accessible…and the kitchen is clean…ish…it looks better, it smells better, it feels better…it’s, you know, like nice, and functional as a kitchen.

So, we are calling it for now on the kitchen, but there are so many spaces we haven’t even touched yet – the built-ins around the island (we did inside the island, but there are cupboards and shelves on the outside, too), the Hooiser and the built-ins around it, the microwave cart, the lower cabinets and bookshelf in the kitchen pantry, any of the cabinets and shelves in the butler’s pantry, under the turtle tank, behind the turtle tank, and the entryway…but we have a clean, functional kitchen. We do not yet have a clean or functional living/family room (we’ve been hanging out on the porch to date), our younger daughter is still sleeping on the couch in the living room, our older daughter’s room is maybe between a quarter and half done, and James and I have done little beyond making our bed and unpacking (not putting away) our clothes…and so we march ever onward…