Those of you who know my wife and I know that I am rarely, if ever, home, and she has been in poor health for several years now. Three of our four kids have "moved out" of the house. The problem though, was that before moving, they did as little as possible to help with the upkeep in chores, and as much as seems possible to add to the piles of messiness everywhere in our house.
I am not afraid of work, and the missus is a very conscientious housekeeper, but with her health affecting her the way it did, and with me being gone for hours and hours every day, the mess got to be a HUGE monster staring us in the face! We have even watched episodes of "Clean House" with varying degrees of guilt, but with such a seemingly insurmountable task, just kept getting further and further behind. The result was an embarrassing situation and never wanting anyone to visit our home.
Well, her boss, seeing how clean she keeps her desk in the office, and hearing how much she complained about not being able to get caught up at home, decided to step in. He brought about a half-dozen co-workers over to our house between yesterday and today, and they boxed up, bagged up, cleaned up, carted off or threw away tons of trash, clothes, books, toys, shoes, and whatever else they could find. The result is an amazingly clean house. One of our bedrooms has become a storage room, but everything else is nice and neat! Here are some pics:
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I have never felt quite so grateful and humble all at the same time before. It is a terrifying process to see people pick through your nick-knacks and little treasures and decide you don't need them, tossing them out. I must say, though, that it is a testament to the impact my wife has on the people who work with her that they would be willing to do this for her. There a re just times, I guess when the dragon is too big for one lone adventurer to tackle. Thank you to all our little elves who magically transformed our place back into a semblance of the home we bought. We have a long way to go before it could be ready to sell, but what a relief to not ignore the elephant in the room anymore!
