My Sense of Clean: I Keep It in the Garden Shed

(Sorry- I realise that’s joke that, like, three people will get, and none of them even read this blog. But I didn’t know what else to call this post, and at least I think it’s funny.)
Most people who know me do not tend to think of me as a neat and tidy person. This is because when I’m busy I’m a tornado- I whip through the house and leave messes in my wake and barely notice. Clutter doesn’t bother me. However, dirt upsets me a great deal, and when I’m not supremely busy, I keep the house in pretty good order. Part of it is that there’s something about having a house that I feel is mine, and part of it is that, since I’m not working right now, I’m supposed to be the one who maintains the living space. That’ll change come autumn when I’m (hopefully) back in school, but for now, I’m the homemaker. I like it this way.
I clean the kitchen all the time, because one has to. I’ve even mopped the floor a few times (we have tile and hardwood, so it needs it periodically). But ever since we moved in, I have been chomping at the bit for warm weather to get here so that I could clean out the shed.
Our garden shed is divided into three little rooms. One, which we have named The Oubliette, because it’s fairly yukky no matter what you do, has a working toilet in it- it’s not actually an outhouse, but it might as well be. Another was full of random junk, and the third was empty, but full of dirt and peeling paint and general grossness. Cobwebs everywhere. You practically needed a tetanus shot just to look at it. We had long since decided that the Oubliette is where we send drunk friends who need to hork. (That’s your punishment. Drink too much and vomit among the mosquitos.) The middle room will do nicely for a brewery- we want to try our hand at homemade mead, and ale, and wine. The third, with new shelving installed, will be my pantry, once I start making preserves and pickles and stuff, after we harvest the intended garden. There is no dirt, really; the back yard is filled with rocks, but the previous owners left a wealth of pots, so we figured we could put in veg that way.
It was really too cold and wet to get out there before today. Normally, Wednesday is when we go out and hang out with the Tribe, but we’ve taken the past few weeks off because people have been OAA for spring hols. This week spring decided to descend upon Yorkshire at last- it has been beautifully balmy in the high fifties, and sunny. So when we got up this morning we hied ourselves down to the garden store down the road, bought a bunch of seeds and some compost, and put in the garden. We have tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, peas and runner beans, broccoli and rocket and spinach, onions and spring onions, and lots of herbs. I like gardening in pots- it avoids the weed problem, and since we have a walled yard, we don’t have to worry about neighbourhood cats getting in and trowelling things up like a litter tray, as was the problem at Constantine last year.
And we cleaned the shed. I’m really proud of that, because I hate getting dirty- I am really schizzy about getting any kind of stuff on my hands- and it was beyond minging in there. The first order of business was to brush all the flaking whitewash and paint off the walls, and then to wrestle the cobwebs out of the corners. Some of those things were industrial strength- James ended up taking a stick and scraping a lot of them off. All the while, I was just cringing at the disgustingness. (I was also wearing a tea towel around my face, so as not to breathe in all the ick.) The pantry was the worst in terms of sheer dirt. The Oubliette wins out in flaking paint, because it’s the only room there that was ever properly painted, but they chose a water-based paint, which, oh, look, gets flaky when exposed to, you know, water. The brewery had the worst cobweb crap, but otherwise it mostly just had a heavy patina of brick dust.
I don’t know how many pounds of muck we scraped out of the shed, but it was a good quarter of a bin liner’s worth. And, hot damn, if the shed doesn’t look almost workable now! I’m so proud of it- it really does look almost clean, for an outbuilding, at least, and it gives the entire backyard such a lift. And it makes me feel like I can now get going on really installing the pantry and making yummy things to put in it. I do admit that when it was all done, I dove for the shower at record speed, and everything had to go in the laundry immediately. But it feels good to know that for our housewarming next weekend, I can proudly show off our lovely garden (well, okay, our lovely pots of dirt that will someday sprout plantlife) and our no longer lockjaw-inducing garden shed to our friends.