Well, it had to be done sooner or later and today was the day that we chose to bite the bullet. I’m talking about cleaning the old house, as next Tuesday is 31st January, the day our six month lease officially expires and the keys have to be handed back to the owner.
I dropped off Sarah and Eloïse on my way down to the Audi dealer. I had to go down there to lend their own car back to them. Apparently, a friend of the director of the firm wants to test-drive an A6 with a petrol engine, so the customer had been promised this car for the weekend. I therefore had to temporarily hand back the 4.2 litre A6 I’ve been driving around in exchange for a 3.2 litre Avant (which is just the estate version of the A6). I’ll be in possession of the this car until Monday, at which time we’ll swap vehicles again. How will I cope for three whole days without those heated seats? Life is hard.
Anyway, after buying a permit so that I can park this temporary car outside the house on Saturday, I drove over to the Elandsgracht to join Sarah in the cleaning. We blitzed the place in about five hours. I hoovered all four storeys, cleaned the toilets and threw out piles of rubbish. Sarah cleaned out the kitchen, packed stuff into boxes and sorted through the remaining odds and ends.
By six o’clock, we were ready to leave with a car packed full of the last possessions remaining at the old house. All that remains for me to do is hand back the keys on Tuesday and read the gas and electric meters. With that, we’ll be able to close the book on Elandsgracht 33, its shoddily renovated interior, rickety and uncomfortable furniture, awkward layout, ineffective lighting, tacky waterbed, dodgy boiler, feeble shower, etc., etc.
All of our friends who spent a night there know the problem. Sorry Florence; sorry Mike. Sorry Daniel, Nicole, Geoff, Jules, Linda and anyone else who suffered the manifold frustrations of that property. We can assure you that you’ll be much more comfortable in our new domicile.
Anyway, after five hours of €3.40 per hour parking, we headed back home with a full car, feeling proud of ourselves for having made such a thorough job of what was quite an unpleasant task. All desire to re-enter that property and spend any amount of time there had completely ebbed away over Christmas and New Year. The thought of having to clean the place was not a pleasing one, but we knuckled down, sacrificed a day to it, and now it’s done.
How I wish we could tackle similarly necessary and unpleasant tasks with such commendable resolve.