A “before” shot of one side of the closet.
This top shelf is the last one I did before we left. Took me about 45 minutes. This is before…
They appear to have glued old magazine or newspaper articles to random places on the shelves. I didn’t see a date anywhere, but they’re old enough that the phone numbers are listed 5-5555 instead of 555-5555, or even (256) 555-5555.
Clean shelf.
When I first went into the closet, I thought a quick wipe of the shelves with a wet rag would clean them up nicely, but like I mentioned, there was a ground-in dirt issue. I got out the Mr. Clean Magic Erasers (which I invariably refer to as “magic sponges”, because please. They’re sponges!) and that helped get up the grime, but it was taking forever to get one little section done, and those sponges don’t hold up all that well. I was going through them pretty quickly. I got Fred’s keys and went to Wal-Mart for a second bucket and some of those Scotch Brite scouring pads. By the time I got back from Wal-Mart, it was 7, so we took a break and had snacktime (another apple for me – I love it when apples are in season) on the front porch.
Oh, and I should point out, I didn’t spend all the time until snack time scrubbing shelves – I took a break to tape around the trim in the spud’s bedroom so that when Fred’s ready to start painting in there he won’t have to wait.
Anyway, after snack time we went back inside and I broke out the scouring pads. They worked a lot faster than the magic erasers had, and so for the next hour and twenty minutes or so, I scrubbed the hell out of the shelves. By the time we left, the top shelves were clean around the entire closet, but I still have most of the middle shelves to do, and all of the bottom shelves.
Guess I know what I’ll be doing on Friday, huh?
“So, when they put up the December 1953 calendar, do you suppose they were unaware that December 1953 was going to end, and then the calendar was going to be useless?”
“Not very forward-thinking of them, was it?”
The rags used on that closet: ONE MEELLION.
We found these old cans of floor cleaner in the guest bedroom closet. I don’t know how old they are – there’s no date on them – but there’s still liquid in both cans. Not that I’m going to try to use them. God knows what the stuff inside has turned into!
There was apparently a ladybug orgy at some point in the past. They didn’t care that their houses were afire and their children alone, I guess.
Abandoned dirt dawber nest in the guest bedroom chimney access.
Spiderman might protect us from the evil bugs, but does he clean? NO HE DOES NOT.
Warning: cat cannot hold her licker.
If I had mad Photoshopping skillz, I’d totally Photoshop that sproingy thing out of the picture so it looks like Maddy has troll hair.
More pictures are here.
Laura says, This is our cat, Norman. He’s a big tomcat that loves to play. Six years ago, Paul picked him up from a guy he works with, his name is Norman, so Paul decided to name him such. He’s the best cat ever. I love how it looks like Norman is yelling “GOT IT!”
Teri says, This is my kitty yawning pic. This is Claire and she is Trouble with a capital T (and that rhymes with C and that stands for Claire!)(yes, I sing to my cats all the time!) Anyway, she thinks she rules the house…ok, she DOES rule the house and our other two cats. You… sing to your cats? We NEVER do that. Ever. Really! Heh.
Miss Pink Ponsonby says, Here is the Back of the Head yawn by Mackie!
And also, I know you would like to take up quilting but let me assure you, the amount of eager ‘help’ you would recieve would make it darn near impossible to ever get a quilt made. Witness THIS: (notice what he is crushing beneath his rhythmical feet), and this (my blog archive entry in which I get a LOT of assistance in making an apron) I hadn’t even thought about that. Considering how “helpful” they all are when I’m trying to cross-stitch (sometimes it’s more than they can bear, and suddenly I’ve got a cat in my lap with a length of thread in his mouth because I’ve apparently been teasing them with the back and forth of the thread), I’m sure it would take me six years to get a lap quilt finished!
Maren says, I thought I would send you a yawning picture of my son’s kitten Freddie – he’s 5 months old & is a real cutie. I must have chased him around for weeks trying to get a decent yawning picture of him. He’s feeling pretty puny today as he spent part of the morning at the vet’s with vomiting & diarrhea. Turns out he has roundworm! UGH! Poor Freddie. Worms are the worst!
We’ve seen Amy‘s Zoe before, but Zoe was nice enough to pose for another yawny pic! Such a thoughtful girl, that Zoe.
Brenda says, My Yenta is a talker, been talking since the day we met her and she and I have running conversations all the time. When we first brought her home from the shelter, and realized just what a talker she is, I told me hunny we needed to come up with a name for someone who talks all the time. He replied ‘oh, a yenta’ which is Yiddish for a female gossip. Well, that was just perfect. She’s my little Yenta. The smaller picture shows her in mid-speech, not yawning. The second pic shows her in her favorite spot on top of my old monitor. She thoroughly disapproves of my new flat panel monitor, especially after leaping onto it and discovering she had no purchase. Was scary and hilarious at the same time!! I LOVE that monitor picture – I could totally see Sugarbutt doing something like that!
Jupe says, This is my mom’s cat, Pasha. Do you think he has enough toys? He was also found at about 3-4 weeks old and bottle fed before my mom adopted him. He is now almost 20 pounds. One year he absconded with a Christmas ham almost as big as he was (thankfully still wrapped), and had it halfway up the stairs before he was stopped. There’s no such thing as enough toys for a cat! I can totally see Tommy stealing a ham and dragging it up the stairs!
Okay, I admit it. When you first posted pix of hte house, I thought to myself, “That place looks kinda uncared for.” My faith in you is restored. NOt everyone would recognize the potential under the nastiness. ANd not everyone would bother to spend as much time scrubbing as you! What’s up with them not cleaning the damn thing before they left? Some people are pigs. THe copious amounts of crap around the yard are proof positive of that.
Can’t wait to see pictures when you guys are complete at the new house
Ok, I gotta know – what’s with those round and rectangular clean areas on the bottom shelf? It looks like they had the same things sitting on the shelf for 50 years, and the dirt just accumulated around them. Do you have any idea what caused that?
You sure have a whole lot of patience with that scrubbing Robyn! I would track down the previous homeowners and slap them silly (as nice as they were/are).
My house was the same way when I moved in. And it was just an older lady living there. But holy cow was it disgusting. And the carpeting? GAG! And she (well her deceased husband) left all sorts of old paint cans in our garage along with an out of date propane tank. What a pain in the ass that was to dispose of all that! People are indeed pigs. Grrr!
Okay, okay…I couldn’t resist:
http://pixeluscious.com/projects/maddie_troll.jpg
(Long time reader, first time commenter, etc.)
Looks like those “vintage” cleaning products might be there from the last time that house was cleaned, in, oh, 1953 maybe? Yow! I do not envy you any of that! A guy like YOU lived here before me, and I moved in to very easily wiped-down shelves, floors, decent paint-job, etc. Now the garage? Another story. I’m STILL working my way thru his old crap (anybody want a set of old Pontiac wheels?? a window air conditioner? random rickety home-made shelves? or your choice of ceramic propane fireplace inserts?). But..no chicken coop here! Anyway, I love seeing the progress you’re making! It’s gonna be so great when you’re all in there!
About those ladybugs, not to scare you or anything, but my then boyfriend, now husband used to live in a house that was on a ladybug migration path. Once a year, for a week or so, literally hundreds of brownish ladybugs would descend upon the house, and since it was an oldish house, they would get inside and crawl over everything. And then, leaving a few dead ones behind, they would fly off and that would be it for another year. There was really no point fighting them, since there were too many to kill and they’d disappear on their own soon enough.
It’s not as bad as it possibly sounds, but looking at your picture, I thought of that immediately, because it was the only time in my life that I had seen or heard of ladybugs clustered together like that. So you might be in a similar situation.
You should have a favorite yawny cat photo contest now, Laura’s Norman is funny but yesterdays of Bev’s kitten, Stanley just takes the cake!
Your house is interesting, I’m sure you will find lots of cool old things around. Lots of work, but fulfilling.
The ladybugs might be Asian Beetles, here are ways to distinguish them, if you are curious: http://www.ipm.msu.edu/beetleBio.htm
From my understanding the Asian Beetles are equally harmless.
Oh, and are you cleaning instead of exercising lately?
If it were me, I might just tear out those suckers (shelves) and go buy new shelves and stick ’em in there.
Ewwww. Ew!! We just moved too, and it’s amazing the way people live. It took me a week to clean the entire two bedroom house. Because I can live with my dirt, but other people’s? Hell no.
We’ve found Lysol and laundry soap that are at least fifteen years old, as well as a giant gallon and a half glass jar full of… we don’t know. Could be some sort of gasoline/oil mixture. Could be where they dissolved the body parts. 🙂 Oh, and a whole drawerful of random receipts c. 1985. For things like toilet paper and pencils. We don’t know, either.
Good luck! Never underestimate the power of bleaching the crap out of it and coming back in an hour.
Is it possible that these people had just piled magazines and newspapers on the shelves and they just kind of stuck to them when they tried to move the piles? That would seem to make more sense.
Will you come scrub my house next???
Can I adopt Maddy? Please 🙂
water=out the nose between holding her licker and trolling around. Geesh!
OMG I busted out laughing seeing that picture of Spider Man! I love your reader’s picture of her cat Yenta sitting on the monitor, too 🙂
Sydnet, that doctored picture of Maddie is so cute!!
I’d say the shelves have not been cleaned since the house was built. It looks like there was hatboxes and other boxes on the shelves and they were moved and the grime stayed behind.
On another note, where did all you women find guys who bring cats home???? Sounds like a great test for finding a perfect man.
Am I the only one who ends up yawning at her computer screen after looking at several yawning pet pics? I thought they were contagious only in person. 🙂
I’m sure there was a comment in here somewhere but I can’t be arsed to find it, either Robyn or Jane was talking about using “I peed” instead of LOL to indicate amusement, and my sleeping medicine has not quite finished kicking so I feel compelled to share that my brother’s friends in high school (15-16 years ago) used the phrase “I peed hard” or “it made me pee hard” to express extreme hilarity.
I use LOL occasionally – usually I use “heh” if something’s mildly amusing, but if it’s actually made me laugh out loud I use LOL even though I hate it; I use a text expander for my work, and if I type “HA!” as I would prefer to do when something cracks me up, it comes out as “HEADACHE!” which causes confusion.
I should probably go be inane (insane?) on my own blog, huh? ‘Night.
Weren’t the people who lived there before elderly? They might not have been in the best health, or even had the best vision, which could account for a lot of the dirt, especially in the closets, which they might not have entered much. Sometimes a house that size can be overwhelming for a couple of elderly people, especially once kids move away. I’m just sayin’.
Ok, I take back what I said in previous comment about them probably just not seeing the dirt….