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Clearing the Crap!
  • Hillis Vassilas
  • Heather Howie
Feb – Mar 2024

Clearing the Crap!

A 15-day adventure by Hillis & Heather Read more
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  • Trip start
    February 18, 2024
    Clearing the Crap!

    Day 1!

    February 18, 2024 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 -3 °C

    The breakdown is there are 8 storage units overall (unincluding one in new jersey):
    2 in downers grove
    6 in Winfield (where our Airbnb is) FYI: of the 6 in Winfield:
    - one we don't have keys to
    - And one is mega full so...
    - we are only gonna interact with 4 of them.

    Our plan is to make the 4 Winfield units into 1 so that we half the overall amount of Winfield units, and if we can do that we will try and empty out the 2 in downers grove. So we would get it down from 9 to 4 units. So far, it seems feasible!

    Today was the first day of cleaning out and aren't we lucky it was a Sunday. It meant only the goodwill was open, so our first stop of the day was the storage units in downers grove where mum knew a lot of it was clothes (easy wins). We emptied out a 1/4 of one of them and then had lunch at the library. We then dropped off our goods at the goodwill, who just took everything, which blew my tiny mind; and moved on to the next storage units. We did a second re-filling of the car, jigged some things around, moved some shelves and called it a day. Then I cooked us a lovely lentil and rice stew and I ended the day with a yoga.

    I hope it's gonna get easier every day, and we are gonna make sure we are maintaining good stamina by taking 10 minute breaks every hour. There's an ocean of stuff that we could just sit and go through, but it's important we keep ourselves rested because the work can get fatiguing (both emotionally and physically).

    As long as we keep our routine of packing the car twice a day with crap, I think we should be able to reach our goals.

    These posts are gonna be a mix of random shit we find, and pictures of storage units (hopefully getting emptier!) and maybe some food and sunsets along the way.

    Love,
    H & H    Read more

  • Clearing the Crap!
    31

    Day 2

    February 19, 2024 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 0 °C

    Okay! So today our plan was to keep working on unit 54, and look at the progress we made! So the second and third pictures are what it looked like in the morning and what it looked like by the end of the day. (The boxes at the back are completely empty!). We brought it down to just 9 boxes left to look through and we have saved those for tomorrow morning and should be done emptying unit 54 by 1pm tomorrow.

    Along the way we found some gems:
    - a picture of me from great grandma Eleanor's dining area, giving my best picture smile
    - another butterfly deco
    - and a pair of sunglasses, modelled by yours truly

    With a full car, we headed back home really satisfied with the amount we had gotten done and had a lovely dinner of brown rice, lentil stew and fried zucchini. We ended the night by watching a couple John Oliver segments and having mint chocolate chip ice cream, which put us soundly to sleep.

    Tomorrow we venture to finish unit 54 and begin sorting through 38 and 64. It all feels possible now and our '10 minute break every hour' tactic helped us manage our stamina and segment our time more efficiently and effectively (thank god she has a Personal Assistant here to help her with her time management am I right people?)

    I can't wait to see how much we can do by Friday when we plan to go to Evanston for the weekend to see Grandpa Hillis, Margaret and Stephanie.

    Much love,
    H & H    Read more

  • Clearing the Crap!
    1
    1113

    A day of great success

    February 20, 2024 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ 6 °C

    Oh lordie today was a good day.

    It started with us finishing the clean out of unit 54 and doing a bit of 64 too and sorting through some things. (We found our mascot!)
    We then dropped it off and got to chatting with one of the volunteers and had a long chat about multiculturalism and a lot of really random topics.

    Anyway we ended up getting home at 2:30pm and had a lovely salad medley made by heather Howie. Furthermore having collected a good few boxes of jewelry in the Airbnb that needed sorting, we decided to take the afternoon off and spend it sorting! Heather did all of this work and she dwindled it down to just one box from 6 separate boxes.

    In the evening I had a call with a potential host! For those that don't know I'm planning a road trip across Canada in which I plan to work on different organic farms as I cross the country with my partner Ellie, and today we had a call with a potential host in BC, right at the base of the Rockies (pictures attached). They seemed lovely and accepted us for the dates we requested, so I was on cloud 9! And to celebrate we drove down to our nearest five guys and gobbled down some well deserved burgers.

    Tomorrow we go back to the grind and keep working on clearing 64 which we will hopefully be done with by Friday.

    Much love,
    H & H    Read more

  • Clearing the Crap!
    1

    Finishing off 54-64-38

    February 21, 2024 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ 11 °C

    So today we cleared the three units nearest to us; these are the three units that I thought it would take us the whole 2 weeks to finish! And we did it in just 4 days! Yay us!

    We arrived at the units at 10:30 and were ready for a drop off by 11:30 so we drove to our fancy thrift shop and emptied the boot. We were right by a lovely brewery that mum had been to with grandma Anne, so we stopped there for a beer and it just so happened that they served hot dogs! So we got ourselves a little something to eat and then headed back to the storage spaces.

    Within an hour we had filled the car and cleared every single space of crap that needed donating. 14:30 was the time when we finished sorting out the three units and I was just flabbergasted that we had done so much work so fast.

    We spent the rest of the day trying to find a spot that would take curtains, and we were recommended a women's shelter donation centre called 'WINGS'. it's on our way to evanston so we will drop off the stuff on Friday afternoon on our way down to grandpa and Margaret.

    We ended the day with a tuna tomatoes sauce made by yours truly and are now relaxing and enjoying the rest of our evening.

    Tomorrow we will tackle the two spaces in downers grove, which are absolutely filthy and where most of the stuff will probably go straight to goodwill cause it's useless crap 🙃🙃.

    Love,
    H & H    Read more

  • Clearing the Crap!
    2
    3

    1 downers grove unit down; 1 more to go!

    February 22, 2024 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 7 °C

    Having sorted the three units closest to us, we made the journey all the way to the distant land of downers grove, to work on the two much older units over yonder.

    This one was far dustier, yet was still filled with mostly useless crap. However we found lots of nice family photos as displayed below! Also a DVD of my year 2 performance of Aladdin in which I played Aladdin! (The still is a shot of me and my four best friends at the time).
    Also we found a pair of sunglasses (what y'all think?)

    After three drop offs and lots and lots of boxes filled with random paperwork that mums wants to look through just in case we find anything important or some cash, we were done!

    4 units down, just one more to go! At this rate, we are planning on also tackling the one that is mega full next week.

    The part that is probably the most aggravating though is that now, haven't gone through the units, the amount she is paying seems like an even bigger waste of money. She has had these ones since 2013 and pays approx 100 a month. So all in all she has payed 12,000 over the past ten years, to store stuff that we got rid of in a day that was mostly useless crap or completely unused. Such a waste of money and space, and honestly, our energy and time too. But someone had to do, and she does not have the capacity unfortunately.

    Love,
    H & H    Read more

  • Clearing the Crap!
    1

    The weekend off

    February 23, 2024 in the United States ⋅ 🌬 -2 °C

    It bloody started snowing today out of no where!

    It honestly started off as a pretty normal sunny warm day, and we thought my weather app was dead wrong when it said it would be snowing by 4pm. But lo and behold, by the time we arrived in Evanston, fluffy flakes had begun to flurry into the drive. We drove to Pita Inn to pick up some delicious dinner through a bloody snowstorm!

    Grandpa is physically progressing well (he's moving around pretty well with his walker) but impatient that he has not reached his full capacity, and feels rather depressed at his lack of physical ability. I empathise with him; I was really impatient to get back on my feet too after my surgerys but the body needs time to recover fully and I told him just that.

    The first cat I ever loved, 'Mister' is being put down tomorrow because he has been struggling with kidney failure for the last few weeks. He loved sun beams in the morning, sitting on my lap (more than anyone's), and crossing his arms in the cutest way. Most of the pictures are a tribute to Mister.

    As a consequence, I have been thinking a lot about death today. I am glad to be sleeping next to the picture I put last, showing so much family I love and their warm faces all squeezed together.    Read more

  • Clearing the Crap!
    1

    Mister is alive!!

    February 24, 2024 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ -1 °C

    Dear readers,

    I am happy to inform you that mister has not been put down today! The vet said his condition had significantly increased since she last saw him and yes, he will still have bad days, but that he is not in the condition she usually finds cats when they are put down. So he will hopefully still be around when I return to Toronto on the 4th of May! YAYY! kelli you can stop crying in the gym now 😂😂.

    Today we went to half priced books to sell the two boxes we had accumulated over the course of our clearing. As much as it was nice to get some money for them, they had a very obvious tactic with which to still turn a profit: they told us it would take 10-15 minutes to process the books and price them, and that we were free to browse in the meantime...
    So of course we ended up buying 4 books which were double the amount we got from the sale! However they were still very cheap, and I had been looking for a road atlas for months and was happy to spend 4 dollars on one. Their travel section was extensive and it was hard not to buy 2 or 3 guidebooks that looked like they might have info I could use in my travels!

    Next, we headed to a gallery space in which Stephanie and her studio partner Amber had pieces being exhibited! Their pieces speak for themselves and Stephanie's adaptation of hers -post the horrible fire that wreaked havoc on her studio- is a testament to her artistic ingenuity and ability to find wonder in the worst of things.

    We will be driving back tomorrow after dinner and getting started on our clearing at 10am sharp on Monday morning.

    Thanks for keeping up with the H's!

    Love,
    H & H    Read more

  • Clearing the Crap!

    Jeez its been a while.

    February 28, 2024 in the United States ⋅ 🌬 7 °C

    Hey squad, sorry for the radio silence, it's been a rough first two days back and I seriously have taken very few pictures for y'all.

    Yesterday (Monday) we cleared out the 2nd downers grove unit, and made a mountain of trash which we kept in the empty 1st one. We tried to put it in grandma Anne's skip by her apartment but we basically filled the entire thing, and decided we should keep some trash for when they empty it on thursday.
    But with the 2nd downers grove unit done, we basically had finished everything we thought we'd get done by the end of the two weeks.

    So with a few more days of work left we, of course, decided to add more to our workload.

    Today we began tackling unit 2033 which is the unit she has had the longest and is the mega full one we thought we wouldn't even get to. And let me tell you, it is mega full.
    Unfortunately it's much less satisfying to go through as most of it is full of old shit, and almost 2/3 of what we have gone through so far is trash, so we are not filling the car with stuff to donate nearly as fast as last week. In fact we have now almost filled a separate unit with a pile of trash bags that we are not sure how we are gonna get rid of.

    The work is getting really fatiguing at this point, but we only have three more days, so we are gonna push through and deal with this shit the best way we know how: by venting to eachother, taking breaks every hour and treating ourselves to delicious lunches.

    Love,
    H & H    Read more

  • Clearing the Crap!
    32

    The day we saw the back of 2033

    February 28, 2024 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 -4 °C

    Well, today was actually a good day moodwise. We managed to keep our morale high throughout the day, and I put it down to water intake, which was more purposefull today and regulated.

    Our goal today was to keep sorting through unit 2033 and by golly we did exactly that. We also dealt with our massive pile of trash that was building up in unit 1054. Basically, most of what is in 2033 has been labelled 'desk, misc, to sort' with some also adding ' not screened' which makes us think it was just tossed in there. The majority of these boxes are filled with papers: magazines, opened envelopes, guides, advice, printed webpages, invitations, and requests to join their insurance or banking institution as a member. It's so fatiguing go through this shit that should have been thrown away years ago.

    Nevertheless we were able to fill two car loads with materials for donations, so we filled the car ready for a drop off tonight.

    The temperature has also been super erratic: yesterday it was 26; today it got down to -6. So we had a 30 degree drop in a matter of 24 hours which seems so fucked.

    Tomorrow we want to have fully donated everything that can be donated from 2033 so that we can dedicate Friday (our final day) to shuffling stuff around so that everything we still have kept can fit in just one unit.

    Love,
    H & H    Read more

  • Clearing the Crap!
    3
    2121

    All that's left is trash...

    February 29, 2024 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 1 °C

    Today is the penultimate day of clearing the units!

    We started by going through the final boxes that we thought might have things to donate and we found some real treats (see owl, old rusty sheep shears, Motorola phone and letter above).

    The rest, was decidedly, trash. We have accumulated so much trash during this process: empty boxes, bags full of papers, old medicine and even some bits of food. Most of it was not smelly, but it still had to be put somewhere and it sure as hell wasn't going back into the units!

    We are lucky that grandma Anne has dumpsters in her building that get emptied on Thursday and Monday mornings and so we filled them up on Wednesday night and then refilled them up in the evening today with the trash from both the Wheaton units and the downers grove units.

    With the trash emptied we were able to successfully close the downers grove account and she will finally be able to stop paying the $190 a month she has been paying for 10 years! Hooray!

    Tomorrow we shuffle things around and try and fit it all into 2033, so we can reduce the number of units from 6 to 2 in Wheaton. Wish us luck on our final day of this exciting adventure!

    Love,
    H & H    Read more

  • Clearing the Crap!
    Our final storage masterpiece
    Can'tBelieve2They'reEmpty

    The Crap has been officialy Cleared!

    March 2, 2024 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 8 °C

    We did it! Hooray!!! We emptied and consolidated the 5 metroself storage units into just one! Task complete ✅.

    We began our final day of clearing with a home visit, as mum had filled the house with stuff to go through. She was diligent with this material and was working outside of work hours to complete her sorting.

    We made our final drop off at the repeat boutique/world relief donation centre who have truly been lifesavers this entire trip. Volunteers who have been going through and sorting everything we donate to make sure it goes to the right place and the right people. Thank you Repeat Boutique!

    We then brought the things we wanted to keep to the storage units and on the last day mum forgot the keys!!! So we got postponed a bit because mum had to drive back to the house to go get them; I did a yoga and got warmed up while I waited.

    We were able to fit almost everything from 2011 (which was the unit we originally thought we would keep) into 2033 in this first hour and then went out for lunch to our favourite local mexican slow cooked meat spot called 'La Birria Loca' (google translate tells us this means 'the crazy beer', but they don't serve beer, so if anyone can translate it better, please do!).

    After lunch we began our game of Tetris: we had to basically fit everything from every unit in to 2033. We took it slow and smart and after an hour and a half we had god damn done the thing.

    The first image is 2033 completed.
    The rest is our victory lap through the beautifully empty 2011, 1054, 1064 and 1038. So with this post, I declare our project a massive success! We were able to complete double what we expected: we brought her units down from 8, to only 2! As of yesterday she is now saving somewhere close to a full $1000 a month on storage units, and no longer has to complete the gargantuan task of going through her own shit 🙃.

    We arrived back at Evanston today. Mum will be here another week before she flies back to Greece, and I'm flying back to Toronto on Monday. Thank you all for following our progress and sending your support through great comments and lovely personal messages. We really appreciated everyone who reached out to us and allowed us to vent to them. We love you all very much!

    And with that, we have cleared the crap, and the penguins have been found.

    Keep your eyes peeled for my Canadian adventure in May, coming to a findpenguins app near you!

    Love,
    H & H    Read more

    Trip end
    March 3, 2024
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