Our story so far: Rather than move directly into the church we intended to convert into our house, the rapidly cooling autumn weather prompts us to rent a house nearby.

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Chapter 6

When it came time to move into little house two blocks from the church ten days after we’d signed the rental papers, we decided to do it over the course of three days. We spent the first day cleaning.

Oh, the house looked clean enough upon first inspection. No garbage. The floors appeared swept. The cupboards probably had been wiped out. Probably.

But my husband, born a Virgo, wasn’t one to trust when it came to cleaning. One of a Virgo’s principle traits is perfectionism. If a Virgo sets out to do something, he typically doesn’t rest until it’s done very (very!) well which I guess is a good thing when it comes to cleanliness (and church reconstruction).

He brought along five gallons of concentrated Simply Green. Five gallons.

We scrubbed literally every surface, and what we didn’t scrub, we swept or vacuumed. Gone were the whispery spider webs in the ceiling corners. Gone was the scrounge on the bathroom floor. Gone was the greasy dust on the ceiling fans that had clearly never been touched, let alone dusted, by the previous resident.

This was a good warm-up for the church, which had sat empty for sixteen months and had 119 years before that to accumulate gunk. Ceiling fan dust would be the least of it.

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Tomorrow: A bed, a bed, our kingdom for a bed! Read it here.