The Remodeling Diaries
I’ve discovered why people don’t live in their house while it’s being remodeled. As soon as the tarps are down and the plastic sheets cover the furniture, construction grit makes its way into places you didn’t know you had. My bedroom looks like ground zero of a war zone and contains enough tools to rebuild a small city. I fear the black velvet suit in my closet — the door to which has been taped shut — is now a ghostly grey. There is some good news to all of this: In an attempt to keep the contents grit free, I have yet to unpack the boxes marked “kitchen.”
Now for the bad news: I seem to have lost all standards of cleanliness, and while I should find that alarming, I don’t.
In my early 20’s, a friend named me “Nancy Neat” because my house looked like those picture perfect rooms in the magazines: Nothing out of place; tabletops artfully arranged; pillows fluffed. I once overheard my first husband tell someone he had to read the newspaper in the first 15 minutes after it was delivered, or I would throw it out. Boy would he be surprised! Like Snow White, I’ve drifted, but why should I clean? The grit is back the next day!
Perhaps more than losing my cleanliness standards, the novelty of sleeping upstairs on a blowup mattress has worn off. It feels like I’m camping out at someone else’s house except it’s my annoying dogs, barking at the white toilet outside, glowing in the moonlight. Don’t you know my new neighbors think I’m a class act? It’s been three weeks since I’ve gotten a good night’s sleep, and if I’m to be honest, it looks like a teenaged boy lives in my room.
Only a handful of clothes are on hangers. The rest are in piles on the floor. One pile is clean and unworn; the other pile is to be washed when the dogs aren’t in the laundry room, hiding from what must sound like Armageddon in the master bath. Besides, I just learned my new washing machine is one of the Samsung models that may explode during the next spin cycle. There’s only so much I can subject Sam and Molly to at one time.
My home remodeling goal is to have everything finished by January 1st: The master bath retiled and painted; the antique vanity and fixtures installed; the toilet removed from my yard and put back where it belongs; the bar in the living room and the buffet in the kitchen finished; three sets of French doors, sills and frames replaced; boxes unpacked and the house cleaned from top to bottom. There! Did you hear that? My little voice just laughed at me!
Today I posted a photo on Instagram of some things on the side of my refrigerator. One is my favorite quote from Henry David Thoreau.
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.”
While I’m going toward that life, I never imagined I would become a slob.
