Sweeping the Dirt

When we pulled up to the house today we were pleasantly surprised that the sea of trash was gone. later we found out that T's mom called the Got Junk people to have it hauled away. She did talk to the county and apparently the trash men thought the trash was from an eviction, so they weren't supposed to take it. I can see how they would think that. So maybe they aren't so lazy.

Since we didn't have the proper... shielding... to brave the mold of the basement we started the long and unglamourous task of doing the fine clean. Again, I was overwhelmed with the scope of it and didn't know where to start. Tony started with sweeping the living floor. He said he swept the same spot several times and swill got trash, not dust but trash. It was amazing. I decided to start on the kitchen.

The kitchen, by far, will be the hardest room to clean, both because it is the dirtiest and you want the room you make your food in to be the cleanest. I think I'm going to work on a piece of the kitchen each time and then work on another room. And I'm going over each place I clean at least twice (on separate days), if not three times. Today I started the hood and the cabinet above it. The grease on the hood was incredible. I had to use Comet cleaner in conjunction with a cleaning solution and some elbow grease, but it finally came up. I couldn't get the underside because the Comet can't stick. I think I'm going to need some heavy duty oven cleaner. The cabinet was much easier, a little Comet and cleaner and it was clean.

Meanwhile, Tony worked on one of the grates that wasn't blowing air. He found that the kids dumped some sort of sugary drink down there and shoved gum in it. He cleaned it as best he could, but it will need to be replaced. Then he started on the living room windows. There was an incredible amount of grease on then, especially to say theses people weren't smokers.

I sucked it up and started on the bathroom after the cabinet. I started with the floor, getting up all the poop stains around the toilet. The bottom of the cabinet holding the sink has a lot of water damage too, and, much like the wall, is falling apart. Every time I tried to scrub the floor by it I got more little black bits of rotted particle board. Also, the genius who did the floor last cut the vinyl too short and there were half inch gaps all along the border, which collected dirt in the pockets. The floor is as clean as I could get it, but I kept getting dirt and wood every time I swept.

Then I started the toilet. The outside cleaned easily. The bowl is a-whole-nother story. What I thought was chipped porcelain around the exit hole it actually caked on, petrified poop. I couldn't even budge it. Rather than make myself frantic I'm going to look into some more potent cleaning products, or a butter knife on a stick. After cleaning the sink I was just about spent.

When I found Tony in the living room he told me the computer desk, which we half thought about cleaning, was trashed. The drawer for the keyboard comes off it you pull it out and the top of the desk is pulled off. Not worth saving. In fact, most of the things in that house I want to tear out and put in new stuff instead of cleaning. I feel like no matter how hard we clean, some things will always be dirty. Its just too far gone.

This weekend we are going to start on the basement so we can get a guy in to look at the heating and the air ducts.

Shopping List: Brillo pads, oven cleaner, bleach, drain cleaner or some other heavy duty cleaner to get that funk off the toilet.