Monday, August 31, 2009

clutter

We moved into Manson Homestead in January of 2005, though the nickname came much later. We brought just ourselves and two cats, and what little furniture we had (a bed and a sofa) arrived almost a full week after we did. We started out here with nothing, literally nothing. Now we've been here for a pretty decent four and a half years, and along the way we've managed to accumulate another cat and a houseful of possessions. I am continually shocked at how much CLUTTER we managed to make in that time, how DIRTY the undersink cabinets got when I wasn't looking. And where the fuck did all these fucking cat hair tumbleweeds come from?

We'd decided we were going to move ourselves. We were going to pack up everything on our own and move it with help from friends and family. And then after a couple of days where I spent all my time lifting and bending and crouching and cleaning and packing, I ended up having some ugly menstrual-type cramps (and some bleeding, but I think that was from something else), and we threw in the towel. The Navy is going to move us. The Navy is going to hire professional movers to come in and pack all our stuff, move it all and unpack it at our new house.

This means Sid and I are left doing damage control. Because I know they aren't going to scrub the doorframes, or the cabinets, or the baseboards, or anything like that. And our landlady was cool with us not repainting before we left, so long as we cleaned up before we left. And that was kind of a given! What were we going to do, leave our dirty finger marks on the white paint for someone else to scrub?

So I've been trying to pace myself and do a little bit each day. My task for the past week has been cleaning out all the cabinets in the house. And noodly FSM, you'd never freaking BELIEVE the sheer amount of CRAP that got stashed in our cabinets simply because we didn't know where else to put the shit. Grocery bags and caulking guns and a showerhead and old license plates and a soggy box of industrial staples... just to name a few. I'm in awe at how much we packed into those small spaces. I feel like such a goddamn packrat.

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