"Clean it up Cinderella"

While no one was ordered around while cleaning the house, I am pretty sure that all of us, or rather, all of the females at one point felt like Cinderella.  No, not in the princess-y way, in the "I am so sick of cleaning someone else's mess" way.

When we bought our home it was pretty disgusting.  We didn't buy it because of what we saw, we bought it because of the potential we saw.

A little background about our house:  It was a reverse mortgage.  This means it was bank owned, but not because the previous owner couldn't pay, because they owned the house outright and asked to start getting money out of the house.  So basically, the bank paid her and when she moved on (we aren't sure if she died or went to a nursing home) the bank owned the house.  So like a foreclosure the house was managed by a group that was paid by the bank to cut the grass and make sure there weren't squatters, but they didn't really clean at all.

Ok, so we needed to do that before anything else could happen.

The first couple of days it was magical and wonderful.  Then we noticed how nasty everything was.  When you'd turn a light on your fingers would feel sticky and gross.  YUCK.  So, Cinderella got to work.  You can't see the tar on this light switch but, you'll just have to trust me.

I can't tell you how many hours and days we spent cleaning.  I forgot.  I blocked it out.  I don't want to know actual numbers.  I do know it was hard work.  For me, this was the most grueling part.  It was the part that we had to do before anything else upstairs could be done.  While this was hard work, we had amazing help from our families!  Both of our Moms scrubbed things down and made sure we weren't going to miss any spots.  Especially the windows.  It seemed like my Mother-in-love was endlessly cleaning windows.

Here they are working side by side, sorry for the dark photos, it was SO sunny out!

They got every window frame and the outside!  The frames were hosed off and wiped down. 

Even though we ripped out the carpet (eventually), I think we vacuumed it.  We left the windows open so that we could get air circulation.  At this point we hadn't turned the AC on yet.  It was August in GA and it was HOT and HUMID but we were only there for 4 or 5 hours a day so it seemed wasteful to cool the whole house. 

Daniel and Joseph helped clean too! (There were others who shall go un-pictured but who also helped us so very much!)

We washed the walls with a vinegar and water mixture or dish soap for tough grime, but more on that later.   Sorry this post is so boring but I am saving my major Soap Box to sit on next post.  It's a doozy.  This was a major process though.  It took a lot of time and effort.  It was good to get to know all the nooks and crannies of the house.  I think we would have cleaned any house we bought, but definitely not this intensely.  If you don't already know why we cleaned so much, you should know I am holding on to that secret, but next post I'll share it!  Stay tuned. ;-)

until next time,

Sarah