Housecleaning story

I mentioned in my post about cleaning
out Bonnie’s house that there were more stories than fit
into one post. Here’s one of them.

Part of what I needed help with was just carrying all the old
papers out to the trash. Of course a lot of people who came to
“help” were really more interested in snarfing things, and I
didn’t have a problem with that. But I think most people did
manage to take a couple of bags of trash out along with the
books and CD’s and kitchen equipment they were taking.

However, one day I arrived and there were two bags of wet paper
smack in front of the front door. I moved them enough to open the
door, and later had to stop my 86 year old mother (a dedicated
snarfer of books, objets d’arts, and plants) from trying
to take them all the way to the trash. They were really heavy
enough that my shoulders felt it the next day after moving them 10 feet to
the trash cans.

I wrote the mailing list:

A couple of undesirable things seemed to have happened between when I
was last there on Thursday and when I arrived yesterday afternoon:

For those who have been inhabiting some alternate universe and
have just arrived in this one: the current climate of New England
has a fair amount of rain in the summer months. Therefore, it is
unsuitable to leave paper outside exposed to the elements. Please
put paper trash into plastic bags before taking it out.

One of the points of this exercise is to remove large amounts of
stuff from the house. Therefore, it is counterproductive to leave
things in front of the door.

The culprit replied:

Sorry, that was partly my fault. There was a large pile of paper trash
blocking the door when I tried to leave. I had to put it outside in order to
close the door.;-) I was exhausted by the time I noticed that problem and
didn’t have the energy to try to bag it.

Someone who had been there while she was opined that if there
was trash blocking the front door, she was who had put it there.

So if you’re dealing with this kind of housecleaning problem, be careful who you get
to “help”. If a volunteer has any kind of history of creating
messes and then leaving them for other people to clean up, you
want to direct that person’s energy elsewhere.