Spring Cleaning Time!

Time to round up some family and friends and tidy up the yard?

April is the month to get started!

Our wallets are cleaned out with taxes, Federal and Property tax here in Washington. No state income tax, we just pay 8.9% on purchases here in Rufus King County.

Mother Wilder made spring tonic to clean out the innards of her children.

Is it time to empty and refill your straw ticks?

My goal when I die is to only have working appliances in my basement, that are being used. Everything else will be upstairs. I have had more than one case of bronchitis/sinus infection from crawling about in basements after people have died/gone to assisted living. The desperate filling of the dumpster, people waiting to take possession. A nightmare. You can't throw this or that away, someone wants it. Someone never comes to pick it up.

My father felt that it was ridiculous to pay 10 dollars to take the old appliance away when a new one was delivered. Why, you could use it for parts, it might come in handy someday...

My father was the duck, duct, speed tape king. But he didn't know squat about appliance repair. The merry day he had the bright idea to blow a charge in reverse through the oven to clear the "plugged line" in the broiler. And he found a neighbor that thought it was a great idea, and had some super charger thingamajig to hook up to the fuse box. Wow. Firebreathing electric stove. The electric charge shot out of the oven, my mother and I jumping up on the table in the breakfast nook, she pushed me off and sent me out the back door to go "tell your father he is going to burn the house down, and me with it!" I was a teenager, not a small child, must have been a sight to see two women screeching....

Back to the spring cleaning. We had a total of nine dead appliances in the basement by 1993. And more in the garage. (sarcasm on) I surely did enjoy the spring day I was summoned to the family home because it was free dump day in West Seattle. Shoveling crap out of the garage. Freeing up half of the garage. And my brother bringing his extra Alfa Romeo over to park in the spot, so he had room to buy another one. I evicted the car in 2003, as soon as my name went on the house title.

I don't take bookcases over to his house to store my LIW things on.

So the following is a familiar scenario to me:

From LIW Lore, Fall-Winter 1978

"All the while families were in and out of the house, the upstairs bedroom on the east held all the Ingalls belongings that were left in the house. It was a forlorn collection of mouldering quilts, pillows, bedsteads, mattresses, trunks, hats, clothes, books and dishes, but there it all sat..."

Carrie Ingalls was sent a letter, asking what to do with the personal items after the Ingalls house was sold. She died before she could answer. (1946)

"The clean-out went ahead anyway. One morning a truck pulled up under the east windows and the old remains of the Ingalls flew through the air. Books and pages and pages of Braille, old bedding and dishes, the old stereoptican, old clothes and bedsteads went."

People bewail the loss of those items. But I bet 95% of it was unsalvagable junk.

As Peter Walsh says, your stuff is either yesterday, today, or someday. If it isn't something you treasure today, it is useless to you, move it out, pass it on, get rid of it!

And the less stuff you have, the easier that spring cleaning is!