Cleaning day at Trish's house

When you live in a bodega (warehouse), cleaning the house from "top to bottom" takes on a new meaning. It's higher, more athletic, a bit more dangerous, than regular house cleaning. Our home/bodega was significantly overdue for a thorough cleaning, and we knew that we needed to start high, and work our way down, since we'd be dropping so much dirt and dust and so many disembodied bug wings down onto the lower levels.

I hadn't planned to clean the tops of the open trusses, but I did send Gus up there - 15 feet above the cement floor - to clear out some large and distracting cobwebs. When he got up there, however, he said it was soooo dirty that it didn't make sense to clean anything else without dusting/sweeping the trusses, since this dirt would just keep falling on us from above. So, Gus swept the dirt off the trusses, cleared out the cobwebs, and wiped down the cords which hang down for the lights.





(Check out the bottoms of Gus' feet, and his seat, for some idea of the amount of dust up on the trusses!)

While Gus was up in the air, David had the job of assisting him from ground level - a surprisingly entertaining job, involving tying rags and the broom onto pieces of rope draped over the trusses and raising and lowering them to Gus as needed.

Meanwhile, Bethany worked on the loft/storage area above the bathroom.



Continuing our progression from top to bottom, Gus brought in our tallest ladder, to take down the quilt which hangs on the wall above the kitchen sink. The quilt is in the laundry now, and Gus wiped down the wall behind the quilt, where bugs and spiders had sometimes made cozy homes for themselves (this is the photo at the top of this post). He also scrubbed off the pencil line Russell had made on the wall, above the level of the quilt, when Russell first hung it up. How that line has bugged me, but I couldn't get up there to wipe it off! I'm glad it's gone!

Next on the list was cleaning the high side windows. These haven't been washed since we moved into the bodega, since they're impossible to reach without involving a ladder and some careful walking along the tops of high bookcases. Boo, being small and spry, was given this job.



As I type this, the kids are currently working on the next level of dirt, washing off the tops of the bookcases which serve us in place of walls, dividing up the large space of the bodega into smaller rooms.

I'd better get off the computer now, and get back to helping my enthusiastic cleaning crew!