The real experience never lives up to the fairytale in your head. When I told people I was working on my house I’m sure everyone pictured me like modern day Snow White, singing as I daintily cleaned before moving into my “storybook house.”
But there were no kind forest creatures to help me straighten up the mess I signed up for: home ownership. My realtor unceremoniously handed me the keys in the driveway. We both wore masks, we couldn’t hug or even shake hands, but she was the only one there to witness what I thought would be an earth shattering moment. There wasn’t even a SOLD sign in the yard!
The next month or so I spent all my free time cleaning. When you own something you finally get to turn all the lights on, take down all the dark blinds and open up the doors. That’s when you see every layer of dirt, dust and hair that the last owner left behind. And my little house had even more layers because the previous owner hadn’t lived in it for a few years. That’s the crazy thing about dust, it crops up all on its own.
I became a human mop. Soaked through with my own sweat in the summer heat as I tried to wipe down the walls and moldings so we could finally paint. The cleaning never ended, but luckily the whole time I had my dad to help me.
After we painted, we ripped up the janky carpet in the living room. We spent hours dragging pieces outside–itching, coughing and sneezing in the powdering padding. We thought our hands were going to peel off from prying the hundreds of staples out of the floor.
But for me all that messy, grimy cleaning wasn’t what wore me out. Once the house’s past was all cleaned out, I had to start cleaning out my own.
When I was seventeen my mom unexpectedly died. When she passed everything was too painful to sort through. The only things I could manage were the contents of my bedroom. Everything else we hastily packed away and Jenga-ed into closets and grandma’s attic.
We wrapped things in towels, mom’s fancy tablecloths, or random placemats, and rarely properly marked anything. So when it was time to move in, and finally get to use our old things, I had no idea what I was going to find.
I wasn’t just unpacking essentials, I was unpacking my memories of my mother–Her trusty rolling pin, my Great Aunt Margaret’s treasured “biscuit glass,” and our favorite mixing bowls. But there were also echoes of her addiction and how it shattered more than just the missing dishes. I had to own my past and the memories I tucked away–turn on all the lights, take down the blinds and open up the doors to them again.
Dad and I cleaned and cleaned as much as we could. We scrubbed pots and pans, replaced the broken dishes, and washed all the linens. Dad was there to listen as I cleaned out my mind. It almost broke me when I found a little plaque with a poem on it that I’d bought for her for Mother’s Day. No one ever talks about moments like that. What do you do with those trinkets? You can’t throw them away, and giving them away feels wrong. So I packed it up again with a handful of other things and tucked it away in my attic.
Once I accepted that final box needed to stay, I felt relieved and even a little empowered. My memories were cleansed and my house was ready for a fresh start with me. Some of the traumatic memories will never go away, they will have to stay packed away, stay a part of me, but that doesn’t mean they have to keep me from a new beginning. After all, the charm of my house isn’t that it’s new, it comes from the unique nicks and quirks that were shaped from its past.
As 2020 taught us all: There’s nothing more precious than breathing in clean air.
Margaret Breaks 