T-Minus 330 Days: Cleaning Totes

If you read this blog enough, you know we have around 250 totes. Most of the totes are stored in our basement in an area known as "Tub City" (see Tub City Tour).  Everything is carefully organized and inventoried. Tub City even has street names! Getting ready for Christmas? Grab the Red Totes on North Ave. Going camping? Get the Green Totes on West Ave. 

A significant portion of our purge effort has been to attack Tub City. As we clean out portions of Tub City, it makes room for other items from around the house to come to Tub City. We stage things in Tub City as we get ready to sell it on Market Place or the next yard sale. Several dozen tubs went to empty my mother's antiques at the antique store (which are now in the garage portion of Tub City).

I would like to report that we are whittling down Tub City - that it is getting smaller and smaller. I suppose it is, but it doesn't feel like it. North Ave has been cut in half, West Second Street is empty, and the Sump Pump Storage Room is about half empty, but the remaining areas remain mostly populated. My wife isn't very concerned about this... but I am! In 330 days, this place needs to be empty - all the way to the walls. And we are no where near that.

We spent part of this past weekend cleaning empty totes. We want to make sure that as we fill the totes with packing for Florida, the totes are clean. We set up an assembly line: one person scrubbing, another rinsing, one drying, and one putting stuff away. It felt like we were washing the kitchen dishes!

In the end, 50 of the totes were cleaned and ready for their next purpose. 50 done, 200 left to go!