Tag: fans

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!

The Perfect Day

Today has been one of those “Perfect” days. The kind where nothing overly impressive happens, you just feel connected with the goodness around you. 

We slept in this morning. Eight o’clock! Amazing! If you have a house full of small children, eight in the morning is late! 

We lazed around in our pajamas, reading books, kids playing busily. And then, sometime around eleven the kids gave me a list of things they wanted to do: go to the library, go to the park. 

Not till we get our chores done. 

So, we divided everything up and the house got clean pretty quickly. I put on my new cover for my futon couch and pulled a couple chairs from other parts of the house so I could have a living room with furniture again. (Got rid of the couches a while back, and haven’t been in a rush to put things back together again.)

I made a menu for the week and then went shopping and stayed within my budget. (Not sure why, but that is always So Satisfying!) And I bought some flowers to put on my mantel in the living room. 

The weather today is about ten degrees cooler than it has been the past month and suddenly my kids are willing to play outside again. And other neighborhood kids have emerged from their air conditioning as well and so I have a yard full of children all happily playing together. 

This coming Monday is a holiday so I don’t feel as pressured to get everything done immediately. 

My washing machine is busily doing it’s job. By Monday I will have a big mountain of clean clothes to fold and sort and put away.

One of the neighborhood kids was talking to me earlier, he’s new, never been in my house before. He looked around. 

You know, this place kind of reminds me of a mansion. 

I was startled and then laughed.

Well, it’s big, but it isn’t very fancy like a mansion. 

And I sit in my old, faded worn chair in my living room. The walls need painting, the trim has never been painted or finished in any way, still showing the marks of over a hundred years of use. My bookshelves are over-run with books. The floors have also not been finished in the past one hundred years, and my kids skating and scootering and shoving furniture all over the place has done nothing to improve their appearance. 

But things are tidy. There are bright flowers, the soothing sound of water bubbling in the fish tank, the hum of a fan. Silence. And then thunder as a horde of children run down the stairs and out the door. The sun is shining in through the windows. My fridge and pantry are full. I’ve run all my errands. We have plans to play at the park after supper. Tomorrow we get to go to church. 

Yes. It is one of those “Perfect” days. 

And it occurs to me, that most days have the potential to be perfect. It just takes an eye to see, and a heart to be thankful.