Extreme House Cleaning

I've introduced y'all to Apartment Therapy a couple of times already. It's a great site about improving the place you live so that it serves you better.

Today I found a similar site for people who are starting out with much worse than average conditions: Squalor Survivors. I often enjoy reading advice that is much more extreme than any I will use because it gives you the other side of the story. By reading magazines, you can find out cool decorations that cost thousands of dollars. By reading Squalor Survivors, you can find out how to clean up disgusting messes safely.

I find the four degrees of squalor very interesting. Well, squalor is not pretty, and I am not going to repeat those here, in case maybe you are trying to eat. But very interesting.

If you are wondering how people could ever let things get this bad, it's generally associated with some kind of depression or trauma or other extenuating circumstance.

One thing I found interesting is that after living like this for a while, things start to get ruined. And when things break, you can’t have anyone come over to fix them, because they can't get to them. So it makes things even harder to deal with:

I spent literally an entire DAY washing dishes. . . . Since I currently have no gas to heat water, I heated two large pots of water on the electric stove, filled the tub in the sink, and let the dishes soak while I heated another pot in order to be able to rinse the dishes with hot water too. That process alone took about 30 minutes, and I had to repeat it for each new load of dishes that fit in the little tub. Initially I had planned to wash the dishes in a big tub outside, but as I started to fill that with hot water, I realized it had a major leak!!! So, I resorted to plan B.

These are people who celebrate when they get to a level of messiness which they consider ordinary or sane. It's like when I get to a level of playing a sport that I consider adequate. Yeah! I'm finally adequate!

And when you read what these people are able to accomplish, it makes your own tasks seem that much easier. No more whining--oh, I only have 1,000 square feet. Oh, I have a lot of papers. Or maybe you do have a pantry full of exploded cans, and now you know other people do, too.

Free Bonus Entry

I got lots of icky things accomplished recently.

I found the checks I had lost. They were in a bag of stuff I handed over, and the person I handed them to was on the ball enough to figure out what happened and kind enough to call me.

I found my rewards credit card. It was with the last of my Disney World trip stuff.

I gave up on finding my work ID, so I broke down and paid the $10 to have another one made. That will save me at least $0.50 per day to ride the buses.

I made an appointment with a second HVAC company to make an estimate. Our furnace is broken. I really can't whine because a) we have a wall heater in the bathroom, b) it's Austin and therefore not really cold, and c) it's never gotten below 65 degrees in the house. But, yes I can whine because it's dropped to freezing several nights this week! And our thermostat is in the hall, the most interior and therefore probably warmest room in the house. We should move our bed into the hall. Except that the bed is too wide to fit properly, so it will have to be slanted, so we will both roll to one side.

Actually, the bed is perfectly warm.

I found a site for finding thrift shops in your town or whatever town you're visiting, so long as it's in the U.S.: The Thrift Shopper.