A Weekend of Cleaning Up

We spent a considerable amount of time this weekend doing some early Fall cleanups – both inside the house and out in the yard. I had to make 2 trips to our local transfer station – one to dump the clippings from the yard for recycling; and, the other to get rid of a bunch of junk that has collected in our garage and backyard shed.

Last May, when Maggie moved to Vancouver, and Hayley to Ottawa, we were left to “temporarily” store leftover furniture etc. in a spare bedroom on the main floor and our garage as well. We’ve become quite used to this as it’s about the third time this has occurred over the past 8 years.

The picture above left, shows a hide-a-bed couch with some tables, a dresser and all kinds of assorted belongings. No one wanted these, so we were left with the task of taking them to Goodwill. The problem was the hide-a-bed weighed a ton and there was no way Paulette could help lift it onto our trailer. Instead, we just wheeled it out to the street, along with a desk and dresser, put a “free” sign on them and within 2 hours everything was gone – just like magic!! We’re going to remember that trick for sure!

We managed to get the main floor bedroom cleaned up enough so that it is now usable again. It still needs to be tidied up a bit, but at least we’ve got all of the unwanted stuff out. This will come in handy this Christmas as the kids are all coming home and they will be looking to sleep in “their” old bedrooms!

On the way back from my second trip to the garbage dump, I stopped to have a look at the South Cowichan Lawn Tennis Club. This is a pretty historic old place as it is now the only tennis club in Canada playing on grass and is also one of the two or three oldest tennis clubs in Canada. It was founded in 1887, only thirteen years after the modern game of tennis was devised.

The South Cowichan Lawn Tennis Club is run entirely by volunteers and that’s probably why the membership fees are still pretty reasonable. The yearly fee for one adult is $250 and only $375 for an entire family. When I drove by on Saturday, it looked pretty much like the tennis season was coming to an end as the nets and other equipment had all been taken down.

As for the rest of the weekend, we managed to get both the garage and the shed cleaned up, cut the lawns(again) and began to clean the lawn furniture so that we can put it in the shed in a few more weeks. All in all, a pretty good start to get everything in shape for winter.