Family…

For those who don’t already know, which is unlikely considering the few people who read this were involved, I spent 4 days this weekend helping to clean up my mom’s garage.  I certainly can’t take all the credit, my sister was an equally significant part of the process.  A little background, my mom has lived in her house for over 40 years now, and as one is likely to do, has accumulated a good deal of stuff.  Much of it useless, or outright garbage/recycling, or broken/outdated to the point of useless.  We had seen this as an issue for quite a while, and had for almost as long threatened to back a dumpster up to the garage and just start filling it.  Well, late last year my sister actually got my mom to agree to do a major clean up.  I had scheduled a vacation at work this week last year and was planning on spending a few days skiing, but decided since my mom had agreed to a clean up, that I would give up several days of my vacation to help.  It also lined up with a break from work for my sister, so we were set.  Or so we thought.  The issues started when we went to order the dumpster, Mom said the 30-yard dumpster was too big and we wouldn’t use it and pushed for the smaller 15 or 20-yard size.  Our position was that if I was spending the time/money/effort/vacation time to help accomplish this clean up, we needed to accomplish as much as possible.  Plus the hassle of trying to dispose of any additional debris over the smaller size capacities would greatly outweigh any savings, which was really only about $200.  Finally agreed to the 30-yard.  We found out when we called that we could get a 3-4 yard recycling dumpster for free with the debris dumpster rental, which was nice since we could actually put small appliances, wire, electronics, as well as the traditional recyclable materials in it.

Saturday started well, we got the bulky items in first and made good progress.

Sunday was good as well, until the afternoon. Things started grinding to a halt for various reasons.  We managed to keep moving slightly and filled the recycling dumpster.

Monday went so poorly, I was ready to just go home.  Disagreements about what could/should be saved/donated/or sold at a garage sale.  I had limited time, and can’t just come back to help with a garage sale in a week or two.  Part of accomplishing this whole thing was predicated on 4 days of solid hard work and getting rid of stuff that hadn’t been touched in 20-30 years.  By the end of the day, I had basically given up.

Tuesday I got up early to go stop by my old work location and see friends and have breakfast with my old manager.  When I got back, my mom was nowhere to be found.  So I just started doing a yard clean up.  My mom finally got home as a was putting bags 15 and 16 into the dumpster.  These were 40-gal heavy duty trash bags.  I ended up using 26 bags total, which filled most of the rest of the dumpster.  That’s how much yard waste there was.  Yes, I wished I could have composted it, like my mom said I should just use here single bag sized yard waster cart.  Cause I had time for that.  Also, at that point I was desperate to feel like the weekend had not just been a waste.  So I just kept going.  The rest of the afternoon after my sister came over after work wasn’t much better.

I was so frustrated, I left my mom’s house before she woke up Wednesday morning even though my flight wasn’t until ~1pm.  Oh well.  She still hasn’t said a basic thank you without a catch to it. It’s 3 weeks later.  And she’s coming to visit in a couple weeks.  Yay family!

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