At Mom's: The Back Porch

I had a fabulous day with my Mom sorting through all the things on her back porch.

We have to get everything out because it is falling down--and she wants it rebuilt. It's not heated--just enclosed.

I started at 10:15. Mom was actually getting her car serviced and she ran late, so I worked for about 45 minutes without her. I remembered to take my before pictures after I'd been working for about 1/2 hour.

This is a good overview of the space. I'm standing at the entrance from outside. That back wall is to the north. The white wall is the east elevation. That's the siding on the house. The door to the house is on that east wall, just to the left of the black shelves. You can see a bit of the door, standing open, through the shelves, there.

Moving left to right, the area in front of the window (which faces west):

The north-west corner. (I am standing in the doorway to the house here.)

And then the pair of black shelves;

As I worked, I brought things inside for Mom to go through.

I used the deck just outside the porch to group stuff.

I piled drywall in one area,

and baskets and containers in another. All of these were on the porch--and all of them were empty. Essentially, as Mom was decluttering inside the house over the winter, she'd move the empty baskets and containers to the porch--intending to put them in the garage when the snow had cleared. She has made me promise not to toss or donate any basket or container until the house is organized. They're now in the garage. (That has to be cleaned out too.)

The sun was beautiful and warm.

And here we are--about six hours after I started.

Mom wants to keep this dresser. I've told her she'll have to find a place for it--or she can't have it.

As I was pointing out that lone box way, way up there to my mom, she said, "Oh good. That's a box of electrical supplies." I must have looked confused because she went on to say, "That's good. We're finding more electrical supplies, because right now, if we had to do a project, we'd have to go to the store, and, you know, buy things." She said it like it was a bad thing.

I was even more confused. "But what's wrong with that?" I said to her, "the store is a perfectly good place to store things."  And she laughed and thought I was terribly clever (as mothers do).

We found long lost riding equipment, a large box of cast off clothing, a couple of dead plants, and even a bee bee gun which no one can account for. We got rid of old mops, a light fixture, dishes, piles and bags and baskets of paper, and a hundred thousand bags. There were cloth bags, plastic bags, and bags of bags. I let my seven year old nephew smash up an old mirror inside a plastic bag--and then I sealed it into an old drywall tub and clearly labelled it. He helped me clear the porch, too.

Here are our "take-away" piles.

The donations filled the jeep.

Mom finished two more bags for donation and one more bag of trash after these were taken.

Obviously, there's more to be done: but we've broken the back on this thing.

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