The second major barn clean up continues…. Every single family member living under this roof has helped to scrub or mop the hay loft floor. The problem was that there is a lot of square feet and every square of it was filthy. The loft is upstairs (duh), and our hay to feed the herd this winter is downstairs…and can’t get wet…and so we’ve actually had to clean and be careful. The buckets of water need to be hauled upstairs and turn dirty immediately.
Gross water, I know, but clean floor in the background. I almost included the pigeon-poop-dirt floor picture, but then my censor kicked in and you’ve all been spared. We’ve perfected a combination of tools all used almost at the same time. The scrubber combo consists of deck scrubber, mop and shop vacuum. My Loving Spouse perfected the solution to get ‘more power’ with hose up over and into the barn window, so we could clean quicker and through the dirty water out the back door….and a new power sprayer.
There has been the expected muttering about never cleaning this blankety-blank floor again! I confess to a tad bit of irritation when My Loving Spouse was spraying water everywhere (subliminal message…ineffectively) and I was the one trying to vacuum it up.
However, when we started to hang the twinkle lights my good humor returned. We raided our Christmas tree lights to hang in the barn rafters. With My Loving Spouse tossing a heavy nut on a string to pull the lights up and over and only managing to get one nut stuck. We did not have enough lights for the ‘look’ we were going for, which could have posed a problem, except this is October and Christmas lights already on sale (sheesh), but for once I was quite glad that the stores are so ahead of schedule.
Seriously, I continue to be extremely appreciative of My Light Hanger happily (well that is a bit strong, perhaps ‘willingly’) moving a double strand of lights already hung, when I decided the current placement didn’t go with the ‘look’.
I’ve seen a lot of ‘quotes’ on the internet about ‘don’t look back, you’re not going that way’…which can be a great attitude adjustment, but sometime looking back can be a good thing…I was so tired of cleaning and still had more to do, when we took Our Friend the Farmer up at night to check out how the lights were working. I was a bit transformed and said..
“Oh, I am so glad we came back up tonight!”
“Why?”
“Because I am seeing all we’ve done, not what is left to do and I am getting excited!” Sometimes looking back is good is good for me…seeing the hard work, the progress and to say nothing of the right ‘look’ for the lights.
When you add friends and family to the loft it will truly look magical.
This just proves that one need not look like an ancient Greek, nor a bearded German to be a philosopher–sometimes they look like a frazzled, exhausted person(s).