I went over today with the goal to clean out two rooms upstairs. My eleven year old came with me. He was mostly interested in finding treasures. He found a collection of old board games and helped me gather up pennies into a mug. He also helped carry keepables downstairs to the room we’ve set aside for that. About fifteen minutes into the project I decided this was going to be a one room project day. About thirty minutes in, I had to start pep talking myself to just stick with it. I think my energy levels are down today. Anyway, I persevered. Another room done.
I didn’t have the trailer available today, so all the trash is waiting at the upstairs hall window to be thrown down when the trailer is there.
I’m hoping I can get back tomorrow and tackle another room.
It’s been a while since I’ve done any work on the Free House. We got busy, and then we talked seriously about selling it. Had someone who made an offer, but then we had some inspections done, and currently, it would be difficult to sell the place as it is and get much for it. If we do decide to sell, we will probably fix some key things, like foundation and structure issues first. We had several people come to the house and walk through and make offers on piles of things they wanted to buy. That got rid of some stuff. Then our youth group was having a yard sale, so we let them go through and take anything that looked sellable.
Then, we just had piles of random things scattered around the house. Today we designated one room for thrift store give-away and started trying to get the other rooms completely empty.
We filled up another trailer full of trash and made some good progress in the downstairs.
We just have a back bedroom and the kitchen to finish the downstairs, which can probably be handled in another two sessions. Upstairs still has a ways to go.
Andy also has done some work on the outside of the house, taking down old screens and fixing some windows, clearing out more brush.
And one fun note, I salvaged an old couch and moved it to my front porch and made myself a fun sitting area. I personally cleaned the room where the couch had been so I knew it had only had old clothes on it and no signs of food or animals near it. Its cleaned up very nicely!
I really don’t want to sell the place. It would be so amazing to have a home that we could offer people in need. Right now we are just taking it one little step at a time.
Today is a lovely Tennessee Spring Day! Andy and an assortment of kids got outside and cleaned out some bushes and trees from the yard next door.
Here’s the before:
And then the after:
And all the brush at the alley waiting for a pickup, which fortunately our city does for free.
In other news, Andy did a job for a business opening up downtown. He got connected with the owner and found out she sells vintage clothing. He told her about our Free House and how there were several closets full of clothing that had been hanginging there for years. She came over to see what we had and ended up buying a nice big pile of stuff, so that was nice!
I’m glad spring is finally here. The warmer weather makes everything feel a little easier and all this brush cleared away makes the house feel a lot more approachable.
Andy and I went over to the free House to work today and I have to say, I think this is easiest session we’ve had so far. Highlights were no poop or pee and no rotten food. Woohoo!
We are in the upstairs now.
So apparently, when our neighbor first moved into this house it was in the 80s and she rented the upstairs from the elderly woman who lived there. There used to be a stairway that went up the outside of the house. Here’s what’s left of it.
There was a door which was obviously not original to the house.
The room we cleaned today must have been her living room. Here’s the before.
We found some interesting things today, including this giant safe thats not going to be fun to get back down the stairs.
If you’d like an electric hotdog cooker, I can help you out.
We actually found a lot of vintage, odd small appliances, all in their original packaging.
Since we cleaned the hallway last time, we were able to throw things out the upstairs hall windows instead of hauling everything down the stairs, which also made everything easier. We could have kept cleaning but our trailer was completely full again.
Here’s the after picture.
We’ve been talking a lot more about what we’re going to do with the house. On days when we are feeling poor and overwhelmed we tend to feel like just selling it. But then we revive and think of how amazing it would be to have it fixed up and available for use. That is still the plan, but sometimes it feels a little impossible. So we push on, one step at a time. We’ll do everything we can and then when we hit a roadblock we’ll reassess. For now, there’s lots of cleaning to be done, yardwork, and several repair projects we can do with minimal funds, so no roadblocks in the near future.
It’s been a while since I’ve been on here. We had one of the busiest holiday seasons I’ve ever had. It was a lot of fun, lots of good memories, great time with my kids, and we ended with the wedding of my oldest son! Then all the kids that came home for Christmas left, school started back up, and this weekend is the first time that I’m feeling like I can catch my breath a bit. It’s been a great day, I got my grocery shopping done first thing this morning, assigned my kids some chores, and then Andy and I went next door to tackle the next project. We worked three hours, came home, showered, and now I’m looking at the rest of the afternoon and evening with nothing on the schedule. Woohoo!
Today’s clean out was a lot more physically intense than normal. We have finally moved upstairs.
Which means everything has to come down those stairs, then you have to climb back up those stairs again to get back to work. We tossed lighter things down the stairs, but we escorted the big giant trash bags. At the top of the stairs is a rather large landing that had been turned into a bedroom.
We filled our trailer.
And then still had lots of stuff to fill another trailer load.
So, this is how far we got today, both of us working. I feel a little bit like an archeologist as I try to figure out the time line for the house. I found mail on the floor upstairs from 1999, which seems to be a significant year as I really haven’t found much mail or newspapers from before then. The upstairs ceiling is lath and plaster, and that started to fall apart at some point in time, so they put a cheap drop ceiling over the lath and plaster. Then I think enough of the original ceiling collapsed that it weighed down the drop ceiling and made that fall as well. So, we were cleaning up a lot of house debris today. As usual, I am always amazed at how much stuff can be crammed into one small space.
In other news, one of my older daughters went through some of the clothes that have been hanging in closets and tried washing them to see if they’d come clean, and they did! She is an eclectic dresser, so she had fun finding some things. This silk suit didn’t fit. Not sure what I’m going to do with it. But it’s clean!
This past weekend my husband Andy got over to the free house and worked on the basement. He had already cleaned out a lot on a previous occasion, but there was a corner he hadn’t got to yet.
He cleaned it out and filled another trailer load of trash and made a good pile of scrap metal for the people who drive around picking that stuff up.
He strung up some new lights.
And he did some work jacking up old beams that support the floor above.
He hopes to replace those when money allows. We’ve also got another support beam that has termite damage and will need to be replaced.
Fortunately he knows how to do all that stuff. We just need time and money!
The next little bit of time is going to be really busy with holidays and end of semester music events and we have a wedding in the family coming up quickly too. I have no idea how much time I’ll have to get over next door, but whenever I do, I’ll keep you all posted.
Today has been one of those amazing days. I woke up early and got up for no reason except that I was awake. Nowhere I had to be immediately. And then, I actually felt like taking a walk. This past year I have not been exercising much at all. But three weeks ago I started a new program that started off with 10 minutes of walking a day for 5 days a week, and each week we’ve added on another 25 minutes a week. So, I took off before anyone else was up and took a lovely walk on a mild sunny fall morning. And then I spent the rest of the day being productive. Which means, that this afternoon when I realized I had no pressing thing to finish, I decided to head next door and see how far I could get in the downstairs bedroom.
This room has been kicking my butt. It was densely packed in and while we have found lots of treasures, it also just had a lot of trash, and it appears to be the place that all the animals decided to poop and pee. So, lots of really smelly things, and so much poop. Today was my third session. But, I did it!
Where I startedFinding dolls in unexpected places is not fun. Finally doneThe side of the roomAnyone familiar with this highschool?And I would love to know what this is??Trash of the day
That concludes the downstairs. The kitchen is not completely cleaned out, but I made a deal with my husband that he would do that. So the next step is to start heading upstairs. With the holidays coming up I’m not sure how often I’ll get to work on the project, but I’ll post when I do!
Hey Everybody! I haven’t been on here in a bit, life got really busy, and then I got a bad cold and all of that kept me from getting over to the free house to clean. But today a friend came over to help and that made it a lot of fun. We continued to work on the bedroom. This room has been really slow going. All the stuff is densely packed in, so even though we only got another quarter of the room cleaned out, the pile of trash is pretty impressive.
Here’s where we started:
And then here’s we ended up:
And here are all the piles of trash we moved out:
We found some interesting things today, which always makes the cleaning out more fun.
I feel like we have hit that point in the project where it seems so big and overwhelming and the progress seems to be inching so slowly, that I feel a little discouraged. Right now I’m trying to not think of all the things that have to be done and just focus on cleaning out one room at a time. Hopefully the next update won’t take as long as last time!
Another day of cleaning. I finished the first clean of the Parlour. The armchair, tv, rug, and lamp all need to get thrown out. I’m not sure if the very old sound system is worth saving or not. It appears to still be working. And then we have to go through and deep clean. But, I’m working on the initial cleanout first.
I think that our neighbor was doing most of her living in this room at the end. It looks like the chair was being used as a bed and there is a lot more food trash laying around. It was interesting, as I was cleaning I got the impression that this room had felt comfortable to our neighbor. I can’t say particularly why. But, it reminded me of my bedroom this past summer.
I did not clean my bedroom this past summer. I had some standards. I kept the trash in the trashcan and the dirty clothes in the dirty laundry basket, but other than that, my room was completely taken over by clutter. Clean clothes that didn’t all make it in the drawer, papers that my cat knocked off my desk, still laying in a pile on the floor. The sock basket that my kids’ socks all live in was spilling socks everywhere. Stacks of books. No dirty dishes, I didn’t want bugs..but you get the idea. I thought about cleaning my room, but I didn’t want to. Not because I didn’t want to clean, but because I wanted the cluttered atmosphere. For whatever reason, this summer felt really overstimulating. The bright sun, intense heat, lots of activities to get kids to and from. Whenever I could, I retreated into my bedroom. It was cool. Not overly bright. And it felt comfortable to me. For some reason, the idea of cleaning up my room and making it neat and organized made me feel like I would then have to be productive when I was in my room. I didn’t want to be productive. I didn’t want to look at a perfectly organized desk and feel the need to pay bills, or write, or do some creative project. I just wanted to exist in my room with no outside pressure. So I didn’t clean it. I kept the rest of the house clean, because those were shared spaces that a bunch of us had to be comfortable in, and where I wanted to invite other people into as well. But, my room was for me (and my long suffering husband who obviously didn’t care enough, because he didn’t take the time to clean it either).
When summer started coming to an end, I tackled my room, and several big cleanout projects in my house and got everything organized and ready to be productive in time for the new school year. But, as weird as it might be to some, I understand how you can be comfortable in a mess.
Here’s what things looked like before I started.
Here’s the pile of trash.
And another pile of trash, ready to go out the window down into our trailer, except the trailer wasn’t there today, so my husband gets to do that when he has time.
And here’s the end product. I think this is my favorite room.
And here’s me, worn out after two hours of manual labor.
