I’ve noticed that we’ve somehow avoided talking about two of our most important and time-consuming chores: **Moving stuff & construction clean-up. **

Supplies, tools, and mountains of siding are being stored in the house. This stuff periodically needs to get shifted around from east side to west side and from 1st floor to 2nd floor to basement to access various areas of the house. Hopefully this will take up less time as materials are used up and the siding is installed.

We also spend a few hours each evening sweeping up of an endless supply of sawdust, dirt, scraps, and ladybugs*.  Not only does it make the house safer and more enjoyable to work in, but we’d rather have the professionals we’ve hired to help us concentrate their efforts on the tasks at hand (electric, plumbing, insulation, drywall) instead of spending their time (and our money) doing grunt work. We love the Shop-Vac we bought a few weeks ago. It’s by far the best way to clean out between the double wall framing. Why did we wait so long!

We’ve also taken on sorting trash and making dump runs. Our transfer station only charges for landfill garbage, so we save money and help the environment by recycling as much as possible. We’re still on our first box (30-count) of 42-gallon recycled, oxodegradable contractor bags, using only 2-3/month, so we’ve been pretty good about keeping waste to a minimum.

* A swarm of ladybugs moved in before we closed in the house last fall, hiding in the framing and under stacks of wood. Every warm day some wake up from hibernating and crawl/fly about before dying. Once the house is air sealed, they won’t be able to get back in, but does anyone have any ideas on how to get them to move out?