A month of cleanup

For the past four Saturdays, I've been clearing away the rubbish at the cottage. I prioritised this, because the local recycling station will be switching to winter opening hours, and soon it will no longer be open on the weekends. I also need space cleared in the outbuildings to have somewhere to store furniture while I'm renovating the cottage. In the wood store, I wanted to make space so that I would have somewhere to store the firewood that comes from clearing trees on the land.

The wood store was in really bad shape. It was so full of trash you couldn't get inside. I appreciate that the newspapers etc. were saved for starting fires, but after animals living and pooping in the piles for decades, they were really not usable anymore. I ended up making four trips to the recycling station, clearing about four cubic meters of trash. It was absolutely disgusting and backbreaking work. There was a lot of phone books and those were especially heavy. What made it hard was that it was difficult getting to the trash and I had to work in bad positions. For every layer I cleared, I uncovered a new layer of trash. Of course it also rained every past Saturday while I was working, so that did not help.

I also made some less than pleasant finds in the wood store. It smelled of gasoline in there, and I eventually found a plastic can that had gasoline in it. I found three steel drums that I hope were empty when they were originally stored here. I also found some pieces of a material that I think has asbestos in it. I had to toss some wood out of the store to get in there, and now my driveway is once again housing a pile of garbage. The wood store cleanup is still not finished. Instead of neat piles of wood there are entire small trees in there. Everything needs to be tossed outside, cut up into smaller bits and stacked into piles. I also got a branch chipper to get rid of branches on the land.

I've also gone through the general store room. There was some things to discard in there as well, but nothing as bad as the wood store. I got rid of some glass bottles and jars, and some cardboard and metal. Also got rid of that red thing that I think was a children's bed. Some old paints and chemicals I also took to the recycling.

I also found some treasures, like some old clothes irons, a teddy bear, old toys, classic soda bottles, a frying pan and a trunk from 1830. I made room for some affordable windows that I bought on Tori. I'm going to use them for spare parts for my existing windows, as I need old glass to replace broken panes. And if there's some windows left I can build some glazed garden beds.

I grabbed some of these canisters and paint cans in the barn and took them to recycling. There was even a jar of lead paint.

All of the about 30 tires are now gone from the barn. I removed some on my own, but the bulk of them we took this Saturday with G, when we rented a trailer to haul some bigger garbage. It was my first time driving with a trailer, all went well! Gained some more adult points there 😄

The old beds are now gone from the bedroom. There are still a few bits of furniture that I think I'll take to the recycling center, like an old broken bench and a rocking chair. But I can manage those on my own.

Even the sun came out at the end of the day. I just love this old oak, watching over the house. We went around the property, marking some trees for removal. There are trees that grow too close to the buildings or to other trees that need to be cut down. I hope to get that accomplished during winter. I think this place will look much better come spring, even if the renovation works will take a longer time.