Spring Clean

It’s spring cleaning time in the Colestin, campers. A renewed sense of ambition is upon me. Last week, we defrosted and cleaned out the fridge and then washed the ceiling fan in the living room and the light fixture over the table. They were both caked with a decade’s accumulation of wood smoke, ash and cooking grease; nasty doesn’t begin to cover it.

I was waiting for Jake to pass away before cleaning the carpets. Sequoia and I track in plenty of crap, but there’s nothing like long haired dog who spends his days laying in dust and mud for generating real filth. Trust me, I’d much rather have Jake than a clean carpet, but since that’s not an option, it was time to get cracking. I fantasized about installing new flooring throughout the ground floor, but that’s not in our budget this year. Instead, Sequoia and I bought a cheap, lightly used carpet remnant, about 12’ x 20’. It covers the floor from the kitchen to the spiral staircase, the sliding door to the bathroom hall. It was very lightly used, but still it was used, which is a little icky. So, of course I had to clean the thing before deeming it fit for habitation. Since we were already renting a carpet cleaner, we figured we might as well clean the rest of the carpets. This is our idea of a fun weekend, campers. It’s kind of sad, really.

I’m sore as hell today, but it was worth it. Instead of a funky pastiche of area rugs and carpet remnants that make my floor look like a low-rent patchwork quilt, I now have a solid colored floor. One half is beige, the other is the salmony color that I’ve had forever, but they go together nicely and they are squeeky freaking clean. The effect is calming; there’s less visual noise in my environment. I find that I’m deeply affected by my physical surroundings, so I hope that cleaning my house helps me to clean out my head a bit.

Now I just have to reassemble the TV room (which is still in boxes from when we painted months ago), wash the floors upstairs, dust the bookshelves on the balcony, clean all the old clothes and crap out of Arly and Kiva’s old rooms, paint, etc, etc, etc…. It never ends.

Sequoia finally figured out what was wrong with the power system. Two of the batteries that had been checked out and OK’d by Medford Battery were definitely not OK. Sequoia took them out of the array, the power shot up immediately and has held ever since. It’s a huge relief. His other project has been to finish off the tool shed next to the driveway. It’s now drywalled, wired for power and even has a little window. The batteries and the inverter are going to move into this new room, which will open up some space in the mud room.

All in all, a productive weekend. It feels good to clean house campers, physically and metaphorically.