Month: July 2026

House Next Door: I can do Hard Things

Today I went next door with my husband and two youngest sons, ie, “the little boys”. The little boys acted as runners for me since I was working upstairs. They carried all the keepable stuff down the stairs to the bedroom we’ve set aside for that purpose. Andy tackled the bathroom upstairs and I tackled the kitchen and pantry closet in the kitchen and the boys helped with the upstairs hallway.

Here’s the upstairs hallway:

And then after.

Here’s the kitchen:

In this pic Andy is the bathroom doorway. This is of course the upstairs kitchen that hasn’t been used in I don’t know how long. The fridge still has food in it though, but its been so long that there is no longer a smell. If that makes any sense. I did not clean out the fridge.

There’s also a pantry closet.

The kitchen wasn’t too bad, but the pantry closet still had old food in it, or rather, old rusted out cans and boxes that had been demolished by time and rodents. Speaking of. I had Andy move the dresser out the pantry and I opened the drawers. Noticed a mouse nest, threw it away, and then shortly after saw a big fat mouse go running across the kitchen floor. Which made me scream and the little boys came running and then they said they hoped another mouse would run out so they could see it. The mouse made the rest of the cleaning more stressful as I did not want any creature to jump out of something I was moving and perhaps run up my arm or over my foot or really just get anywhere close to me. Fortunately no more mice were spotted.

And then the kitchen mostly done.

Andy did the bathroom.

While cleaning the bathroom he found these.

And here its done.

We didn’t have our trailer today so we piled up things by the upstairs window to be thrown down later and then had our garbage bag pile. Definitely a full trailer load.

We wrapped all that up and then I came back home to jump in the shower. Only to discover that the little boys had just started their showers so I had to wait. So I sat on my back deck and pondered how much we have completed in one year. Just working at random times when we have had a free day. That upstairs kitchen and bathroom were rooms I had been gladly avoiding as they just seemed so gross and overwhelming. And now they are done. I have decided this house project is going to be my easy reminder that I can do hard things.

House Next Door: Upstairs Room, Take 2

I went over to the free house today to clean out another room. This particular room we had already cleaned out, though not it’s closet. But, when people were going through the house to pick out things they wanted, this room became the dumping ground for all the sorting and it managed to get full of stuff again. So I tackled the room again and also did the closet, which turned out to be a lot bigger and roomier than I first realized.

My two youngest came over to help. I set the eleven year old on fan and lamp duty. He found some fans and figured out which ones worked and then came and set them up for me. I opened a couple windows and it stayed decent. There is a kitchen upstairs that we haven’t tackled yet and the eleven year was poking around in there and realized there was a window unit AC in the window. He turned it on and it worked! But I had him turn it off cause I’m still paying the electric bill. But maybe when we tackle the kitchen and bathroom up there we can put on the AC. Though the open windows and fans do also help with the smell. I don’t know, we’ll see. The boys were a great help carrying keepables downstairs for me and they had fun poking through the stuff.

Here’s the closet.

This upstairs is considered the 2nd floor, but there’s a walk out basement where we have the trailer, so when I throw the trash out the window, I’m throwing it down three floors.

Here’s the window I wrestle all these bags through.

With my dog admiring the view.

I squeeze the trash bag through the window and then have to balance the bag on the little overhang and scoot it over so that it will fall down into the trailer. I was about to ask my little boys to help me with this, but then images of them leaning too far out the window made me change my mind. It feels a little precarious.

While we were cleaning my boys also discovered a snake skin in the room I was cleaning.

Which did not make me feel real comfortable cleaning out the deep dark closet. But, God has been merciful and I have not come across wildlife and bugs and snakes yet.

We are getting close to our one year anniversary of starting this project. I would love to have everything at least cleaned out by that milestone. We’ll see!