I am off to Oregon to get my camper van next week!
The imminence of actually having to deal with parking that sucker has finally gotten me in gear to start the process of selling my condo. As per my plan, I’ve done a pretty good job of de-cluttering over the last coupla months – birthday party visitors, did my place look less clutter-y? Now the final step is to hire cleaning professionals.
The tidy and prosperous neighbor in the unit below mine gets his carpet cleaned a coupla times a year, so I got the name of his cleaner-dudes. The process is kind of a drama, with hoses and flexible tubes running two (or three) stories from the deck to their noisy truck below, so it made sense to hire someone who knows the drill here. I set up an appointment with him, and asked hin for house cleaner recommendations while I was at it. He said call Bubblegirl, who was the only cleaner he’s actually gotten positive reviews on … oh and she’s “smokin hot”.
Now that made me prejudiced against her (would that be “hot-ism” ?), since I figured that she would get by on her looks and actually not work so hard. But I had no better prospects, so last Monday I had Bubblegirl and her helper in for a good housecleaning. My hot-ist fears were unfounded – she was thorough and quick and all-around great, if a little pricey (her and helper ended up costing about $50/hour!), and I will comment no further except to say that hard work scrubbing ovens for years seems to be a good way to keep one’s figure.
Afterwards, the most striking difference in my place was the windows. The combination of clean windows and no leaves on the trees makes the clarity of the view past my deck quite startling. It was also kind of an object lesson to me in dusting and cleaning in general. Turns out it really is possible, even easy, to pull out the stereo components and dust under and around them. It only takes a minute, but I’m not sure I’ve ever done it.
The day before Bubblegirl, I myself had gotten out the ladder and the shop vac and crawled around my loft sucking up dust and those nasty little web things that seems to collect in about a minute around here. With a hose extension and stretching from the ladder, I can actually suck on anyplace on my high ceiling! That was an entertaining afternoon, and I felt really good, like I had been to a strenuous yoga class.
Then came the carpet cleaners. This too was a good thing in its own right. You have to get everything off the floor – I have random things that have been hanging in random places on my floor for so long that I don’t even see them any more. But on this day I must notice all those thing, pick them up, and put them somewhere. That big black broken microwave that has been sitting on my floor for over two years is now GONE, off to find a happy new home via Goodwill. Gee that wasn’t so hard, what took so long?
Now I have condo that is clean, clean, clean – at first I was was almost afraid to move!
Now it is Thanksgiving day, and I am messing up my clean, clean, clean oven with brand new turkey spatter and generally making a greasy mess of the tidy kitchen. sigh…
Will my place sell sooner, later, or never? I certainly have no idea. But I feel good about the situation in any event:
- I have a clean place.
- I am learning new habits of tidiness, because I need to keep things reasonably nice-looking for drop-in prospective buyers.
- I will no longer wonder how much it’s worth on this market, I will for better or worse know!
Today, halfway through my stuffing fixin’ I remembered that the one-year anniversary of my icky little little heart attack was last week. I remembered because I was thinking – What did I do last year? – and the answer is that last year I went through the T-day motions, but at a pretty depressed level. I was mostly just shook up about what had happened. I guess I do have a lot to be thankful for – that I’m still here and that I found a good solution to my issues; a solution that enabled me to still afford that dreamy camper van I will finally have next week!