My Fun Night

Last night we spent much time cleaning up after the Great Flood of '08. The water is all finally gone from the basement, which is to say, there aren't two inches plus of standing water any more. Some things are still wet, obviously. We got a good chunk done, but there's still plenty to go.

I started by bringing 98% of Logan's toys in the basement upstairs for cleaning. This was all done later, but Brandi wanted to get them up stairs, and I needed the room for other stuff. The toy gathering included filling a garbage bag with 100+ plastic balls from his ball pit for individual cleaning. Then there was the area rug that was still dripping with water that needed to go outside. Brandi's dad had already rolled it up, so I used one of the conveniently placed ground-level windows to shove the heavy, stinking, dripping roll of carpet out onto the driveway. I did get less water on me at this point than I would have thought. After that, Brandi's dad met me outside so that we could unroll the rug and put it over the porch railing. Mmmmmm, love that stagnant water on thick carpet pile smell.

Following that I took down the drapes that we had downstairs, which are pretty long and touch the ground, and threw that in the washer with the sheet that we had up to separate one side of the basement from the other.

After Logan went to bed we started the toy clean up. We watched Fringe and then a couple episodes of Dexter while Brandi wiped off the general toys and I dunked and then wiped off approximately 198 (I counted) plastic balls in a mixture of mostly water and a little bleach. It wasn't too bad of a task, although my knees don't like me after I sit cross-legged on the floor for so long. Now my hands smell like I've been swimming.

The next step will be to mop the linoleum and then roll it up to dry the concrete floor underneath.

All of this probably sounds worse than the damage really was. We knew the basement floods, so most things that could get damaged were up on top of plastic tubs and other things. Plus, this is giving us the excuse to go through boxes of crap and through out the stuff we don't need and organize better.

Brandi took some pretty cool pictures of the street and yard while I was at work on Saturday, which are on her computer, so I'll get those up later.

Also, had a good time in Michigan on Sunday/Monday, but I'll get to that later too.