Kathy is black and blue from the attack of the falling keyboard, but was back at work trying to finish the clearing today. The office, yard and crawl space are all complete. One room remains and that is Alice’s bedroom.
Alice had a hard time releasing today. As the house gets emptier, she is holding more things back. She called Inspire and released eight bags of clothing, but there are three more of the bagsters to sort (one bagster is about 20 cubic yards). After we clear her bedroom, she will have another three bagsters to sort. This is so much work to do in such a short time. It has only been 3 weeks!
We are on the last day of clearing tomorrow and tempers will be short. For the upstairs, Alice wants to sort everything herself, so, the process has slowed way down. (We were presorting for damaged or destroyed items in the basement.) Part of our vision for the house is to allow Alice to do her arts and crafts, and to bake special cakes again. There is a lot of equipment involved in those activities.
We will take Friday, Saturday and Sunday off so Kathy can go see her father and to allow Alice time to catch up with sorting. We start cleaning next week, but with all of the stuff still in the house, it will be impossible to set up an organizing system. Although Alice has released about 95% of what was in the house, she has brought back in about twice what most people would store in their homes. She is determined to get this sorted down even further, but it is so much to do. We don’t have any ideas — yet — about how to resolve this situation. We hope the weekend break will help. I think Alice needs a break from the releasing and some time to work on the going forward part of this project. I think we all do.
Paul Harwood came today to install new light switches and evaluate the plumbing problem. He will be working on the plumbing over the next few days. Danny Hovey has been working on the cross beams making steady and amazing progress at leveling the floor. Thank you, both, for your generosity of time and materials. You have made it possible for Alice to remain in her home.
Alice gets so excited about little things like walking on the carpet and turning on lights and have them actually work! One of the things Alice said to me on our first meeting was she wanted to run her toes through carpet again. I think we all need a trip to Home Depot to take off our sandals and do some toe wiggling in the carpet samples in anticipation of the new carpet to come.
Thank you to all of the volunteers and contributors who have made this intervention possible. By the end of this week, all of the hazardous situations will be corrected. What a good feeling this is to look back on all we have accomplished in just three short weeks.
—Reported by Jackie Wells Smith
No photos today. See Day 17 report and photos.
