As mentioned at the end of Part 2, on May 20th I headed down to Little to commence the great purging. Greg let me borrow his little red Ford Ranger for my first two trips, as I didn’t have my own vehicle.
Little is sparsely populated, and if you need something not available at the one store on the island, be prepared to order it and then wait a month or more for it to arrive by ship. This means when properties on the island change hands, they are almost always fully furnished and contain someone else’s clutter. I did not realize the extent of the clutter my small house came with until that first trip. Every cupboard, shelf, drawer and closet was completely packed. I was not expecting this, as the idea of looking through someone else’s storage when “viewing” a house never crossed my mind! Sure, I had towels, dishes and silverware galore, but I also had to deal with things like countless dead rubber bands, dozens of 10+ year old baking mixes and boxes and boxes of every type, shape and size of screw you can possibly imagine. You get the idea.
I had ten days to deal with it all, because I wanted there to be space not just for me on future visits but, unlike my predecessor who only used the house a few months each year, I wanted to be able to rent it to a friend. It was an exhausting trip. I knew from the inspection that the AC units were on their last legs, so I did all the work with just the ceiling fans going, and it was hot and humid. I resorted to taking many 1 min or less showers and not bothering to towel off.
I will often go out in the morning to dive on the Little Cayman Divers boat. It leaves from the LCBR dock, but it’s the “independent” dive operation–the one people staying at BnBs or Paradise Villas, property owners, and folks over from Grand dive with. It’s not tied to a resort like Reef Divers is to LCBR, or like Southern Cross Club, which has its own operation. One of the perks this trip: getting to see the house from the water.
I started my declutter in the master bathroom, which seemed pretty easy, as was the master bedroom; both were pretty spartan. Then I moved on to the utility room cabinets, which were absolutely bursting with “stuff.” In them I found packet after packet of unopened and expired Benadryl, going back almost 15 years. There were dead bottles of wood glue (the glue had gone dark brown), so many containers of old screws and bolts, other expired medications and many other things I’ve simply forgotten about–and that was just in the utility room.
I moved on to the second bedroom, which had a closet packed with old wetsuits and rain coats. Both the master bedroom bed and the second bedroom bed had drawer storage beneath them, and the “guest” room’s drawers were packed with old pillows and linens. Plus, throughout the house there was a great deal of stuff on the walls, and I pulled a lot of that down and added it to the growing pile. There were a few treasures, though: I was stoked to find a little Ty turtle in a plastic bag in the bottom of the den closet, and the cute crab puppets were left with the house. I adore them.
By day four I was tired but pressing on, thinking I was making good progress. That morning I took the day off from diving and got up at 6am to try to get the kitchen done in a single day. All the drawers and cabinets were crammed with stuff, and my declutter muscles were getting a huge workout. I started with the cabinets on the sink side, and it was close to 1pm by the time I opened the eighth and final cabinet on that side. I ended up bursting into tears upon pulling out its contents: it was completely full of door knobs (mostly old and rusted out), dead thermostats tucked neatly back in their original boxes, ceiling fan controllers (mostly broken), plus more bottles of dead wood glue and yet more fasteners. It was totally overwhelming. I left my pile scattered across the kitchen floor and fled to get an iced coffee at the only cafe on the island–which belongs to two great friends who helped calm me down. Two hours later I arrived back home fully caffeinated and able to deal with the pile.
Thankfully, the cabinets on the other side of the kitchen were mainly full of housewares and only took a few hours to sort through. Then it was on to the pantry, where almost all the food was way way way past its expiration date. After that was done I managed to get to sleep around 11pm. The next day I was shattered. I dove in the morning and then spent the rest of the day resting, and felt guilty for “not being productive.” Over the next two days I managed to get through the contents of the laundry room and the little den space, but I felt like I wasn’t doing enough.
I also did a solo shore dive during the trip. I didn’t have booties, and when I was coming out of the water a wave pushed me into a sea urchin. Having a few spikes was painful, but they were only in my tiny toes, and some hot water and vinegar dealt with most of that problem.
By the end of the ten days I realized I needed to be gentler with myself. I only managed a first pass on the living spaces, and that was OK. My grand plans to tackle the ground floor storage room and garage would have to wait, and that was OK too. My big win was being able to get all the stuff I decluttered that wasn’t complete garbage out onto the front (south side) of the wraparound porch. Then my friends advertised a great rummage “sale” where people could take what they wanted and were asked to donate whatever they thought was a fair price into a small cash fund that went to help a long-term resident who was off-island receiving treatment for cancer.