Week One

Just like that, week one is over. Today was a continuation of the tasks of yesterday: we did some sanding and applied additional mud to our drywall job and worked on adding shelves in two closets in the N house.  Sometimes I think we should show a little more progress than this after a week of work, but, then again, the drywall project has languished for five months because no one was able to get to it, so any progress at all is a blessing.  Deferred maintenance is a thing here.

The women sorted through a big box of Christmas stockings, separating out ones with names that are no longer here.  These are a big things to these kids as many of them come from very tough family situations.

There’s a lot of preparation for the final garage sale of the year which happens next weekend.  Garage sales here have garnered almost a cult following as people will come for many miles away for these sales, even flying in from other states.  Several large vendors donate all their returns and display merchandise to Hope House, who sells them at half of retail price.  Much of this stuff is unused, still in the box.  It’s a really big deal.

So all of this stuff is being queued up where ever there’s room, which pinches some other operations. The wood shop is full of racks of clothing, so all the tools are pushed to one side of the building, and the big table saw has a blanket over it and is piled with stuff.  So we have had to wheel what we needed outside and work around all this.  But we’re making it work.  We’ll get a front row seat to the garage sale next week, probably helping out on Friday and/or Saturday.  So our normal Monday through Thursday work schedule will probably be a bit messed up next week.