Fall Cleaning

The weather in Kobe has finally cooled down to "fall" temperature. It feels like an average summer day in Oregon. Not humid, not too hot, but you still don't need a coat. Even at night. This, and the appearance of all the things I love to eat most, makes Fall my favorite season in Japan. Hands down.

Fall is sandwiched between two fairly inconvenient seasons, though. Late summer and winter. Summer is horribly hot and humid. It is hard to keep your clothes from mildewing and bugs find there way in from all angles. With the cooler weather, I have started wearing some outfits that haven't been out of the closet in a while and they didn't smell so good. Unfortunately, there is really only a short window of time when I can do anything about that. After fall is winter - which I also like, but it takes forever to dry wet clothes outside and you never get enough sun to really feel like you are frying the little friends that multiply in your futon.

With all of this in mind, I decided to use my lovely, sunny Fall Saturday to clean out the closet. First, I hung our spare futons outside in the morning sun to make sure they were baked through and hopefully friend-free. While they were out of the closet, I dusted everything down. Once the futons felt warmed through and smelled better I put them back in their dust bag and hung all of our clothes - especially winter clothes that haven't been out of the closet in more than 6 months - out in the sun. I let them air out and dusted off the rest of the shelves in our closet. I also organized a bit and finished all the hand washing I've been putting off.

Incidentally, all this dusting kept me sneezing and blowing my nose for the rest of the afternoon.

After a good airing-out, everything went back in the closet and the great laundry undertaking began. I did three loads (the absolute maximum I could fit on our back porch to dry) and our laundry basket is still piled high.

At least the laundry is no longer carpeting the kitchen as it has been. Hopefully I can take care of the rest of it tomorrow.

Between all of these activities, I also got the bathroom, bedroom and entrance cleaned. Its a huge relief to have all the nooks and crannies finally cleaned out, especially before we have to close up the house for winter. The only other seasonal cleaning I need to get done is to have the kotatsu [heated table] blanket dry cleaned before we actually want to use it. It tends to collect crumbs and drips during winter when we practically live under it. We really should have just cleaned it before storing it away in the spring. Oh well.

The trouble with spending the day working on closets and bathrooms, etc. is that our main living space is still pretty gruesome. I'll be tackling that next.

Not done yet.

Boo.