Basement Cleanup: 2010
With the recent flood threat last month, and the removal of many items to the first floor from the cellar (to keep them away from the waters that we thought might come in but did not this time, thank goodness), our basement is pretty empty at the moment (relatively speaking). So, Mom deemed this a great time to have it scrubbed and bleached. However these days, she cannot get down there to do the work herself, though she’s the one pushing hard to get this done. I wished not to do it alone, so as not to take so much time away from my writing, and my sisters weren’t much into the job either. Besides, it’s a basement after all; not some dining hall that must be pristine. So I see not the need to make it spotless. Cleaning the whole thing will be a lot of work, that will require at least a few full days. So for these reasons, I just couldn’t get my heart into doing the bulk of that particular job by myself. 
So, we’ve contracted nephew Garrett to scrub the floors (the entire floor) and he began that work this morning. This means unloading the many shelves down there, pulling them out, sweeping underneath them, and then scrubbing the floors and lower parts of the walls. We’ve also requested that he wash behind all appliances, to get up any leftover debris and mess from the flood of 2004. Then, while he’s at it, he can excise the cobwebs hanging from the beams and walls.
I will supervise and guide him with the hope that this be completed by the end of the week. We’d like to move everything back down to the cellar and get it organized as soon as practical; at the moment, I’m having to step over all that junk to reach my files in the first floor office; not good. So since I couldn’t talk Mom out of doing this, I am quite anxious to get it finished. Of course I feel less rebellious about this since Garrett will work the most difficult parts of the job.
I’ll track our progress in the comments below.
April 12th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Today, Garrett cleaned the open floor areas – not underneath any shelves. Further, he says that Mom told him he needed not pull out the shelves, and to just get beneath them with a broom where he could but not to worry about those hard-to-reach places. That’s great, and makes this job much less laborious.
Tomorrow, he’ll remove the cobwebs. Then, that should about do it.
April 13th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
12:00 PM: Garrett came this morning for a couple hours. Looks like he’s finished the basement, though we did not pull out the shelves. He did sweep underneath them however. Looks good.
April 21st, 2010 at 4:59 pm
07:55 PM: Began carting stuff back down to our clean basement today. I’ll just do this bit by bit; each time I go down to the cellar, I’ll carry an armful.
April 27th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Made roughly five trips to the basement today, carrying back down the totes and one chair that we brought upstairs to protect against potential flood waters last March.