We worked on cleaning today. We vacuumed the carpets and clogged three vacuum cleaners in the process. Alice plans to replace the carpets in the house, but we needed to give her a more livable space until we resume work.

Kathy is off to Ohio to be with her father. He is having brain surgery tomorrow and all of our prayers are with the family. While she is there, she will help find a new assisted living space and work with her siblings to get her father downsized into an apartment. If all goes well, we will be back at work on the 20th for the organizing part of the project.

In the meantime, Alice is working on her reverse mortgage plans. We are in the “new beginning” phase and Alice is ready to solve some problems. She plans to replace some of the appliances (we think we can salvage the range), paint the house, replace carpets and of course, organize.

When we restart work, we will be assigning everything in the house a permanent place. Kathy will start on the upstairs and I will do the basement. We have to go through all of the closets and cabinets with more sorting. Alice is going to work with some of her friends this week to cut down her “clothes-to-keep” pile a little more. She had about 20 bags of clothing to donate to Inspire this week and will be working on more contributions for the Kidney Foundation.

Today, Kathy started organizing the office. Santiago cleaned the bedroom and bath. Mario vacuumed the house and help Henri cleared the screened porch. I cleaned parts of the kitchen, but there is still a lot to finish. We loaded three trucks today and still had trash left over! Alice was back at work this week teaching her water aerobics class. Danny stopped by to install new locks on the doors — now that they actually open!

The weekend off was good for everyone. We a productive day and look forward to taking this massive project to the final phase of organizing.

—Reported and photos by Jackie Wells Smith

Day 18 photos below.

A lot of clean-up is required in the kitchen. The appliances may all need to be replaced.

The range cleaned up nicely, but we will have it checked by a repairman before it is used again. Alice wants to replace the counter tops and refinish the cabinets.