Tuesday, Long post, I am disabled:)

     First of all thanks for all the well wishes on my last post, it was so nice to come home and find them.  The last 5 days were a blur of activity and stress.  I am happy we went, but it is not something I can do again and I made this very clear to my brother.

     I know you all would have liked to have had before and after photos, but as this is not my place but his I felt that was not in the cards.  I would not want someone showing my dirty laundry to the world so I will not show his. I will however tell you about it.

     When we arrived on Thursday afternoon, the house was more picked up than I have ever seen it, as you could actually walk through into the kitchen and  it had obviously been vacuumed. Hub's and I and bro immediately unloaded the beds and frames into the living room and I went upstairs to assess the bedroom situation.  The room's very large closet was full to the ceiling with boxes of belongings spilling out into the room.  All of these things belonged to my sister-in laws sister who is now in a drug treatment facility.  All of this had to be moved and gone through and the house has very little storage available at the time.  So the first day was just spending time making the situation a whole lot worse.

     There were three large storage spaces available in the house. One was an under the stair very deep closet.  There is a nice size closet in the entry way and a very large back lean to on the kitchen.  All were full to the brim with either garbage old yard sale things or things that needed to be thrown away. One of the problems with Montana as a whole is that it is very expensive to live there.  There is not sales tax which sounds great, but the property taxes are outrageous, and there is a huge charge for all service related things that most states have for free or reasonably priced. To license even a beater car there can cost several hundred dollars a year.  To get a drivers license is very expensive.  To go to a municipal dump is $22.00 a visit.  So poverty stricken people who need to get rid of garbage, such as old mattress's furniture and extra broken things cannot afford the dump fees.  This leads to a lot of illegal dumping and hoarding of garbage, which then leads to yards full of old broken down garbage, and then a rampant rodent problem.

     Rents are very, very high in Missoula and slum lords abound.  They only provide very small trash can service not big enough for a family.  So where does the garbage go?  Into the yards, or it is stored in the houses. It was obvious that my brother and his wife had, had a very huge mouse problem.  They had used traps and finally poison.I only found one actual dead mouse and that was in the lean to on the back of the house.  But the mouse droppings were everywhere.  It was disgusting. I wore gloves and a mask, soaking every single drawer and cupboard and orifice with disinfectant and bleach and letting it sit for 24 hours and then cleaning it up.

     So Thursday night was just assessment and spraying all areas and unloading closets and going through what could be saved and what needed to be thrown away due to mice.  We ended up all told taking 6 full truckloads to the dump.  I was able to free up enough space in the understair closet and the front closet and lean too to store all of the sister's things.  Hub's came back with the truck on Friday morning and we took a total of 4 trips to the dump. Plus two additional trips with a friend of ours truck later.

     Mostly it was old broken furniture, urine soaked mattresses, bags and bags of garbage.  Old broken toys, mouse infested bags of clothing, and file after file of papers and just bags of trash.  Broken appliances,old past dated food.  I could not believe how much trash we cleaned out of the kitchen. I don't believe the house was clean 5 years ago when they moved in and nothing had been cleaned since they moved into it and it was disgusting.  Every surface was colored on with crayon or magic marker, inside and out of every cupboard and even the refrigerator.  Both of the girls are autistic and very hard to handle. They can be trained , but someone has to really watch them and work with them, not something either my brother or his wife do well.

     I found not one pencil, marker, or crayon in the house.  The girls also have NO toys of any kind.  Just dirty stuffed animals.  Because they cannot destroy these.I was able to go through a large UHAUL box taller than myself of old stuffed animals and get my sister in law to downsize to two small toy barrels, one for each girl.  I would have thrown away many more, but it is her house.  I also insisted that many of the animals be washed in hot water and then air dried which helped.  The older of the the two girls (8) is getting much better as she is in school and has regular intensive help and intervention.  The younger will go to full time kindergarten next year and that will also help.

     I tackled the laundry room first,scrubbing all walls, and cleaning out every corner, sweeping and cleaning the floor.  Then it was onto the kitchen, just scrubbing one wall and the stove area took 4 hours.  Spraying down all mouse infested parts of the kitchen.  Friday morning my brother was getting snarky about how he wanted the girls room done, but he had yet to move anything out of the room and I refused to do any moving of boxes from that room.  I would clean it but it had to be empty.  I know he was frustrated with me and overwhelmed but I held my ground.  He now had several areas to take the stuff and he had to figure it out.  I just continued to clean in the kitchen until he finally had the room emptied about 5 o'clock in the afternoon.     In the mean time he had gone to a call in job at 1 p.m.and was home from the job at 4 p.m.  Still I had not gotten into the girls room.  Why?  it was not empty.  I think then he realize I was not going to go up and down the stairs with box after box of crap.  He had the room emptied in an hour.

     I then spent 4 hours on my hands and knees scrubbing an old painted cracked hard wood floor and all the walls in the bedroom.  I would have to wet a scrub brush and soak the floor and let it set before going back to scrap and clean up hardened on newspapers and just old food and garbage off the floor.  I know this floor had not been cleaned in five years.  It was back breaking work and finally at about 9 o'clock that night I was able to roll out a large rug and Bro and I set up the beds.  The girls were thrilled.  Especially the elder one as she kept coming up and hugging and kissing me.  I had spent about 6 hours working on Thursday and a good 12 hours on Friday, I was pretty stiff and sore when I got to my girlfriends for the night, where I took a hot bath and washed my overalls.

     It was on Saturday when I got up that I was surprised I could move at all, but by Saturday night I realized that I truly am disabled.

Cont Saga Tomorrow: as my right hand is numb and it is starting to hurt to type

Have a great and productive day staying positive while you are in the negative.

Kim