Wednesday, January 27, 2010

No "Blow and Go"!

It really is the little things.
Like leaves in the laundry room.
How?
How do they get there?
And the dust, too?
Ok, so I'm a guy, and I live in my own place.
I can't blame any roommates. And I can't say that it's
all dryer lint.
So where is it coming from?!

From this guy!



















And believe it or not, it took MONTHS to figure this out.
The yard guy (Juan), comes every Wednesday when I'm not home. Days later I would go into the laundry room to fetch something from the fridge (it's a small place, the fridge is on the service porch), or to do laundry. And it was always, well, dirty. Eww, a dirty
laundry room! Who wants that?
So I'd vacuum, figuring that the lousy door, or the old windows, or maybe the gas vent for the water heater was letting in dust. And
leaves? It was like having a ghost, but not being able to admit it at first. Hmm, leaves? Ok...I'll just go with it...
But then I noticed that the floor mat by the door was sometimes moved away from the door, as if by a gust of wind. But it's just not that windy in sunny, weatherless southern California.
Hmmm... Really, what could this be?
I moved into this place in June. It November before I finally figured it out.
The Yard Guy! The Blower!
As he goes by the back door, he uses the hurricane-in-a-backpack they're all sporting these days. It's enough to blast under the gap in the door. In just a few seconds, leaves, dust and sand are blasted in. Dust settles everywhere, the leaves scatter, the mat moves. And when I wandered in one day, I finally had a Newtonian moment: Aha! It's the Blow and Go!

Well today, no more. I waited in hiding (see photo from behind kitchen window and screen), and popped out at the appropriate moment. Finally, no more tornadoes in my laundry room. And what's funny is that I caught my neighbor asking Juan for EXACTLY the same thing at her back porch. And she's lived there for THREE YEARS. So now I don't feel so bad.

Sometimes it takes a while to figure things out. And sometimes it's the little things that make a big difference. Right now I've got things so clean that I'm eating off the laundry-room floor!
Now get back to your books!