Coming home is just the beginning

[aadler]

 
Susan and I completed purchase of our house while I was processing through Fort Dix on my way through Iraq. As a result, she’s been living here for over a year and a half, while I’ve only been in place for five months. She went through moving all our possessions here, then a winter alone, all while working full-time and doing what she could (our son did most) for her increasingly ailing mother (who, in fact, died the day before I arrived home).

The point is, by the time I got here, the house was a mess.

I mean, serious mess. I mean, we’ve never invited anyone here because we’d be mortified to have anyone see it.

Incrementally, over a period of months, we’ve managed to improve the situation. Uncharacteristically, most of that has been my effort. I say uncharacteristically because, in household matters particularly, I have little initiative and zero work ethic, while Susan is conscientious and almost compulsive. However, her physical capacities were at a low ebb for a long time, so basically I was the one who did the most work because I was the only one able to do it.

A lot of the problem, a lot of it, was her damn animals. My own philosophy is simple: people incapable of housetraining pets, shouldn’t own pets. Susan, however, is such a lover of living things that she can’t do without them, despite the comcomitant never-ending contribution of domestic manure. On our carpet. Three dogs and two cats. (Okay, the cats used a litter box. Even so, they genuinely seemed to produce approximately one-third their weight in cat crap per day.) So possibly the most significant single action was the acquisition and installation of a pet door. It took awhile to get them used to it: for the first week, I just removed the entry flap entirely, and let them go in and out through the open space, this while the weather was still warm enough to accommodate it. Then I taped sheets cut from a plastic grocery bag over the opening, but free-swinging, so they could learn to go through a barrier, however negligible. Then I added a piece of cardboard, so they’d have to push just a bit more. Then I added a flap of corrugated cardboard, heavier and more substantial. And then, when they had gotten used to the process, I removed the entire assemblage and re-installed the original heavy (but transparent) plastic flap.

And it worked, beautifully. There was still some adjustment time; one of the dogs, in particular, was still inclined to pee in the entrance hall, but that eventually stopped. Behaviors change over time, but this was a relatively short time, and now it’s a distinct anomaly when I have to deal with dog crap, or step on a wet spot on the carpet. Just this week, in recognition that the cats likewise were regularly traversing the pet door, I removed the litter box and watched to see if they would transition to outdoor excretion. So far (knock wood) they seem to be doing so. So Phase One — correcting/negating the messes that continually make themselves — has been successfully negotiated.

The rest was less specific but got accomplished a bit at a time. Sorting piled bills, most of them shredded as duplicates. Cleaning and putting away accumulated laundry. Repainting the entryway (Susan had already pulled down the wallpaper she didn’t like). Doing a steam-vac run on the main hall, and I’ll probably do the living room in a few days, now that much of the junk in there has been adequately dispensed with.

Make no mistake, the house still isn’t a showplace. It isn’t even ordinary messy. But it’s no longer a disgrace, and there’s time to improve yet further.