Cleaning the Basement

I published this wonderful little piece about the disaster that was this house when we moved in 15 years ago. We bought this house from out in-laws. Sadly, they never cleaned this place out. So here is a little piece that I wrote 11 years ago about our attempt to get one of several appliances out of the basement.

Cleaning out the basement in our house proved to be a greater challenge than we were anticipating.

Once we finally got up the nerve to go into the basement, we wanted to run back upstairs again, screaming for our very lives!  Armed with trash bags, rubber gloves, and dust masks, we went down and began sifting through the piles of stuff in the basement.  The mind-numbing job of cleaning out the basement blurs in my mind.  There is one particular episode that stands out very clear.

The basement had turned into a repository of dead and unused appliances.  As we cleared out the trash, we were stunned at what we found underneath.  One freezer, circa. 1959.  One free standing stove, circa. 1962.  Two concrete sinks- you know, the laundry tub kind that your washing machine drain into.  The sinks were broken, but they were still in the basement.  Two old microwaves: One from 1978, and another from 1988.  One old stereo, four old speakers, and two old, broken television sets.  And three dehumidifiers. Somehow, these appliances needed to get out of our basement.

We borrowed a heavy-duty hand truck from my brother-in-law, and we borrowed a pick up truck from a friend.  My husband took a Friday off work, and we were ready to run to the dump.

The first things we hauled out were easy.  The microwaves, the dehumidifiers, the televisions, and the old stereos.  We had no problems hauling them out of the basement and out to the truck.  We loaded up our first load and hauled it off to the dump.

The large items in our basement presented more of a challenge.  The stove and the freezer.  Due to the odd turn at the top and bottom of the interior stairs, we could not take them up through the house.  We were going to have to use the walk-up from the basement.  It’s a tight turn from the door up the stairs, but the basement door opens towards the concrete wall, so we thought we could get everything out through that door.  Husband managed to get the stove out and up the stairs with minimal help.  My job was to stand at ground level and hold the storm door on the basement open from above while he attempted to get the stove out and turned up the stairs.

And then came the big challenge.  The freezer.  That monster was heavy.  Much heavier than what we were anticipating.  We attempted to move it towards the door, but it was too heavy.  Husband pulled out the tool box and took the door off the freezer and hauled it out to the truck.

The freezer was still heavy, but with the two of us- we managed to get it onto the hand cart.  He took one handle of the cart, and I took the other and we carefully moved it over to the door.

Now, there’s a problem we hadn’t anticipated with the back door.  The door does not open all of the way.  When my in-laws finished the basement, they put a wall next to the basement door.  The interior door only opens up 90* from it’s closed position.  It doesn’t open all the way.  Try as we might, we could not get the freezer through that door.

We looked at each other, aghast.  Were we going to have to chop the freezer into tiny bits with the sledge hammer in order to get it out of the basement?  As we sat on the floor and pondered our options, we looked again at the door opening and the freezer.  It looked like we could get the freezer door through if we pulled the door off the hinges.  So, husband pulled out his tools and we took the basement door off the hinges and set it aside.

Once again, we wiggled and waggled the freezer, trying to figure out the magic angle to get it through the doorway.  No matter how we worked it, we could not get the freezer through that door.  It kept catching on the freezer hinges that had previously held the door.  Muttering unmentionable things under his breath, husband took the sledge hammer to the hinges on the freezer and pounded them into submission.  After 10 minutes, both hinges were pounded flat against the surface of the freezer.

Before we decided to attempt moving the freezer again, we took a good, hard look at the storm door.  It did not look as if we were going to be able to pull the freezer out of the basement without doing serious damage to the storm door.  Our biggest fear was that if we dropped the freezer while we were hauling it up the stairs, it would go hurtling down the steps and destroy the storm door.  Once again, out came the tool box and husband took the storm door off the hinges and gently set it inside, next to the door.

Muttering silently, we managed to pull the freezer out of the basement and turn it so that it was ready to be pulled up the stairs.

Heaven help us– we were not prepared for the weight of that freezer.  I’m not certain how much it weighed, but I am willing to say it weighed at least 300 pounds.  It took two of us over to pull that freezer up the basement steps.  We tilted the hand cart back until it would go back no more.  And then, we pulled it up a step.  Panting, we looked at each other.

“What do we do next?”  I asked.

“Slowly”  husband said, looking at the freezer and back at the 12 steps we still needed to haul the freezer up.  “Shift yourself up a step.  I’ll hold the freezer while you move.  Then you hold the freezer and I’ll shift up a step.”

We moved ourselves around and then, on the count of three, we pulled the freezer up the next step.  We continued on in this slow and painful manner until, two hours later we finally pulled the freezer up the last step and onto the level ground.  Too tired to even talk to each other, we pulled the freezer over to the truck and stopped dead.

We were going to have to lift that freezer over 2 feet at once to get it into the bed of the truck.

“I’ve got an idea” said the husband.  We live on the top of a hill, and the driveway slopes down steeply from the carport to street level.  He had the truck backed up the driveway.  He pulled the car part way down the driveway, until the back of the truck was only a little above the carport.  He then found a heavy duty piece of wood that he used as a ramp to cover the short distance from the carport pad to the truck bed.  We pulled the freezer up into the bed of the truck with minimal effort and tied it tightly down to the bed of the truck.  Husband left the freezer standing on the hand cart, and put blocks under the wheels of the cart.

Once we got to the dump, we used the same board to make a ramp from the truck bed to the ground, untied the freezer and pulled it down the ramp.  When the freezer was halfway down the ramp, the wood splintered, and the freezer came crashing down to the ground.

At that point, the staff took pity on us.  They took charge of the freezer and the splintered wooden ramp.  We put the remains of the hand truck in the back and headed back home.

But what about the basement doors?  We so desperately wanted that freezer out of our lives that we left the house with the basement doors sitting in the middle of the basement.  We finally got the doors back on and working after midnight.

Gardening

If you've been in a grocery store lately, you know that prices have been rising across the board and there are still supply chain issues that have not resolved themselves. I went to the grocery store the other day and picked up a bag of groceries that cost me less than $40 a couple of years ago.  I paid $65. 

So, what can I do to fix the situation? 

It's time to plant a garden.

I am a very half-hearted gardener, but it looks like I'm going to have to buckle down and make it happen this year. I have a really nice herb garden. And I grow a lot of lettuce and kale. They're easy and fairly low maintenance. Jalapenos grow well for me, as do plum tomatoes. But everything else has failed miserably for one reason or another. I usually end up buying a couple of bushels of my favorite produce at the farmer's market and then process that for use later - either by freezing or canning.

But this year? It feels like a year when I really need to buckle down and get the produce coming in as best as I can. I need to put some vegetables in and make certain that they grow and that I can harvest them. I've actually been thinking about this for a while now.

I'm still going to put in lettuce and kale. I actually eat a lot of kale when it's a matter of going outside and pulling a few leaves out of the garden.  And lettuce? I eat a salad almost every day for lunch when lettuce is in season in the garden. But I feel like I need to plant more that I will be able to freeze or can.

Looking over my notes from years past, this is what will be going into my garden this year:

peas

plum tomatoes

green beans

winter squash

zucchini

kale 

lettuce

radishes

jalapenos

broccoli

cabbage

I am still planning on getting produce from the farmer's market that I can process and set aside for the winter. But this little patch should provide us with enough fresh produce to keep us healthy through the summer AND have the added benefit of helping to cut our grocery bills down a bit.

I'm still looking through my seeds and I'm getting ready to put some seeds in a cold frame in the garden. Who knows? I might toss some extra vegetables into that tiny little plot this year!

What about you? If you're planning a garden for this year, what are you going to plant?

Final Arrangements

This past week has been a something.  

I've spent time with Mom when I can. She's eating next to nothing, and breathing has become more and more difficult for her. Hospice has been in to let us know that we need to take care of things while we can so that we aren't making decisions in a hurry at the last minute.

So, almost a month after Mom entered Hospice, we have finally taken care of her final arrangements. 

We spent a day at the bank, making certain that the paperwork was taken care of correctly. Let me tell you, you need to take care of this now for your loved ones. If you have elderly parents, make certain that everything is taken care of.  You yourself should take care of this now for yourself just to give you some peace of mind. We had to make certain that we had both the POA and POD paperwork filled out correctly.

We've found a funeral home. They were amazing and kind, and let us know everything that we needed to know in order to get the final paperwork taken care of. They were very low pressure and let us walk out without signing anything and a solid estimate in our hands.

We ended up shopping around for a cemetery. We found two that we both really liked. We ended up finding a place in Maryland around Frederick that is in a beautiful spot. Who knew that so much was involved? My father and his sisters all ended up in the same family plot in the same cemetery that the rest of the family is buried in and has been in for generations. My in-laws both had their ashes spread. 

Do you have a will? A friend of mine had a brother pass away a few years back. He had no other living relatives and no will. Taking care of his finances, his possessions and his final arrangements. It took them months to iron out the paperwork at the bank. The rest of his estate took over a year.

Do yourself a favor.and take care of your final wishes while you have the opportunity. Don't force your family to make last minute decisions. Give them the gift of your last wishes in advance. Let them know what you want so that they aren't forced to make decisions in the middle of great grief.

Single Use Plastic

How do you feel about single use plastic? You know, a straw or a plastic fork or bottle that you only use once before disposing of it?  A very small percentage of that plastic is recycled. The rest is tossed into the trash where it will enter the waste stream.  If it makes it into a landfill, it will take well over 300 years before it decomposes. And then, there's that whole plastic in the ocean thing.  You know, that large patch of plastic garbage that is sitting in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of the United States?

I have been working for years now, trying to reduce the amount of single use plastic I use. It's a very slow and sometimes frustrating process. 

I began my journey by working to get rid of plastic water bottles. About 10 years ago, I bought a bright orange water bottle. It has traveled the world with me. I have taken it to work, on vacation, and though multiple airports. I recently picked up an insulated tumbler that I keep on my desk at work.

A couple of years later, I began searching for eating utensils that I could carry in my purse. I found a set of bamboo utensils that comes in its own carrying case. Since I've bought those utensils, I have been carrying them everywhere I go and used them many times. You know how when you order carryout online there's a little knob that asks if you want utensils? I've been turning that function off for years now and using my own eating utensils.

Reusable Grocery Bags?  I have them. I keep them in the back of my car.  True story - 9/10 trips to the store I get into the store, realize I've forgotten them and then head right back out to the car to grab them and then head back inside again.

Laundry Detergent comes in those big plastic containers. There is just so much waste. For a long time, I used powdered detergent because it came in cardboard containers. Recently, I discovered laundry detergent strips.All I have to do is pull off one strip and put it into the washer.  They work really well, and they come in a small, cardboard container. 

But where do I go next? Single use plastic is everywhere, and sometimes I feel like I'm never going to make a difference.  And then, I remember that I am one of many and we are all doing our own unique thing to help reduce the use of Single Use Plastics.  Each individual action makes a huge difference when we add them all up together.

What wonderful things are you doing to reduce plastic use in your house?

The Cat Who

Many years ago, Lillian Jackson Braun wrote the coziest of cozy mysteries about a journalist who lived 400 Miles North of Everywhere and his two Siamese Cats - KoKo and Yum Yum.  The first book I stumbled across was The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts.  I was teaching 3rd grade and having a very rough year of it.  KoKo, Yum Yum, and Qwill were exactly what I needed at the end of the day. Maybe you remember when grocery stores sold best sellers in the store? This book was in one of those cardboard displays as you walked in the door.  I was drawn to the blue cover with cat paw prints all over it.  And the whimsical title was the icing on the cake!  I had found a series and an entire subgenre that I adored. My Dad loved The Cat Who, too, and we used to read the books together, trying the food that was described in the books and speculating about the location of Pickax.

I've researched everything I can find about the mythical town that Qwill lived in - Pickax.  For a long time, I thought that the books were set in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan, but after further research I firmly believe that they were set in the Thumb Region of Michigan, where Lillian lived. There is a town there named Bad Axe. I was planning on dragging the husband out there in 2020. And again in 2021. But that never happened. Thanks, Covid. I still really want to see Bad Axe and see the similarities to the world I found in the Cat Who Books.

With Mom in Hospice, I've been spending a lot of time sitting around.  (When we are not arguing about the switch on table lamps.) I haven't been able to concentrate on reading very much of anything lately. But then I stumbled across a Cat Who book while straightening the house.  Now this, I can concentrate on! Since January, when mom got moved to the hospital, I've read 15 of the books.

I've got a handful of books left to read before I finish out the series.  

Are you a fan of cozy mysteries? What series do you recommend I read next?

An argument over a lamp

 The most ridiculous of arguments happened over the weekend when I was visiting Mom.  She has a lamp in her room that was beginning to strobe. I was afraid that it would trigger a seizure. so I attempted to turn it off.  Mom kept telling me that it had a switch at the bottom.  It didn't have one of those switches, but it did have a knob switch just below the bulb at the top of the lamp. The knob was broken, and all that was there was a screw.

Mom became agitated when we unplugged the light, and she began yelling at me because she thought it had a switch.  I picked up the lamp and asked her to show me where the switch was.

She leaned over to her left, and showed me the switch on the lamp next to her, turning it on and off.

When I tried to tell her that she was using the other lamp and not the one in my hand that was broken, she started yelling at me again about the switch on the lamp, turning the lamp next to her on and off....

I tell you, this is what memories are made of!  I'll be looking back on this in a few years and laughing!

Note: I did take the lamp home with me. I replaced the bulb and put a new knob on the lamp. Now to argue with myself about whether or not it's worth putting it back in her room.

2022 Resolutions- March Update

 The beginning of a new year brings all the promises that I make to myself about the things that I will accomplish this year. My goals are lofty! Will I be able to accomplish everything? Join me in this grand adventure of hopes and lofty goals and we’ll find out! Do you want to play along? Let me know what your goals for this coming year are!

February has not been a great month. Mom entered Hospice. The constant trips to Arlington have kept me busy, busy, busy with minimal time for blogging or a life outside of the hospital and work.

 

1) Post 1 book review a month on my YA blog. 

I have kept a YA Book Blog since I was in grad school. Circumstances have prevented me from publishing anything to that blog for the last year or so. My goal is to review at least one book a month this coming year.  There are so many good books out there!  

January - The Queen of Nothing

2) Renovate the Master Bedroom & Bathroom. 

This is a huge goal many years in the making. There have been issues with that bathroom since we bought the house. 16 years later, and we are finally going to get it fixed!

3) Find good homes for the books  

I've been on a committee that has gifted me with thousands of new children's books. While my work on the committee will soon be finished, I need to find a home for all of the books. There are children out there who need good books.

More books are out of the house. I still have many, many left in the house  

4) Go explore 2 new to me places  

Who doesn't love an adventure? I have a list of places that I want to go see. I'm going to put out a map, and get some darts, and see where we end up.

5) 40 Bags in 40 Days Lenten Challenge

Have you done this challenge before? For the 40 days of Lent, you get one bag of junk out of your house. I've done this challenge before. Sometimes, I don't get the last bag out of the house until June, but wow.... it really does feel good to get 40 bags of junk out of the house. I'm thinking that some of these boxes of books will be counting up in the total count. I've got a lot of books.....

Lent begins today! The challenge begins today!

6) Get together with 1 friend each month  

I don't think I should have to write this down, but you know, it's been a weird couple of years. I want to make seeing people we love a priority. Doing this around COVID Restrictions is going to make this an extra special challenge.

January- Jim & Kathy

February- Joe & Paula; We finally caught up with them after almost 20 years! Bonus!

7) Another stamp in my National Park Passport

We got this one done early! The Mission Trail in San Antonio!

8) Landscape Front Yard 

This has been on the list for several years now. I really want to get this checked off this year!

9) Clean out the Garage

If you've read the blog for any length of time, you know that we bought this house 16 years ago from my in-laws. And you also know that they were borderline hoarders. We've made progress in the house, and while there is still clutter in the basement, I believe that we will have the last of it out by the end of this year. (See the 40 bags in 40 days challenge.) But the garage is another story. 16 years, and we have not yet been able to park our cars in the garage because of the amount of their stuff. Our goal is to be able to park a car in the garage by the end of the year.

10) Get the kayak out in the water once each month during May, June, July, August, September, and October.

Seriously, we have a kayak.  Why aren't we getting out in the water with the kayak more often? What is our excuse? The kids have moved out. We don't have to worry about finding a sitter or getting an extra kayak for them.

11) Get my Bike fixed and get out for some bike rides.

I bought my bike over 30 years ago. I rode it a lot before the kids got busy in high school. Now that everyone is out of the house, it is time to pull out some of the things I really used to love. The top of that list is riding my bike. In order to do that, I need to get the bike fixed. The tires are dry rotted, and I'm sure it's got a host of other issues going on. 

12) Visit My Cousins in Texas (a trip postponed from 2020)

Done! We made it down over a long weekend in January! It was so good to see my cousins and my aunts and uncles!  I even posted a few pictures from the River Walk in San Antonio. It's been 10 years since I last got down here. I can't wait another 10 years to get back. Family is too important. And time is fleeting.

Breckinridge Park! We met up with my cousins at the same outdoor pavilion where I had my 5th birthday party! That pavilion is just off to the right from this picture.

Other Goals:

I’ve got a couple of other goals I would like to accomplish this year, but I honestly don’t know if I’ll be able to get to them. If I do, I’ll be thrilled beyond words. If not? I’ll add them to the list of things I want to get to in 2023.

This is going to be so much fun!