And that's done

 So this morning I finished cleaning my bedroom.

And I took a giant ziploc bag of change that I had accumulated out to the bank in the Wal-mart lobby - they have one of those coin machines, and I was delighted to learn that unlike coinstar, they only charged a 5% fee for exchanging coins (Coinstar is typically 10-12%)

And then when I dumped in the coins ($99.03 worth) and handed my receipt to the teller, he counted out 99.03 and I said "what about your 5% fee?" (the receipt said I SHOULD receive about $94 with it). And he shook his head and said "don't worry about it" so maybe they really needed the coins? At any rate, that more than paid for my next task - taking the heavy, heavy trash bags full of old magazines and other accumulated trash to the transfer station - you can do that, you drive over a scale, toss your stuff in a Dumpster, then drive back over the scale. The minimum charge is about $18, going up to $72 for a ton (I can't fit a ton of stuff in my car, even if I had that much!)

I wound up with 200 lbs of stuff. Even with the cost, that was about $19. I laughed and said "oh, well, that's cheap enough!" to the guy when I paid, and he looked funny at me and said "You're the first person this week who didn't complain about the price" but really? $19 to get rid of that much stuff, to have it gone from my life and not have to dole it out week after week into my wheelie bin? That's cheap.

Then I took the last big boxes of books to the library. The young guy who accepted them kept my boxes, but whatever, I'm pretty much done boxing stuff up now. 

And then I started cleaning/sorting in the sewing room closet. Pretty much everything I want to KEEP (except the clothes on hangars) was already packed up, so at that point it's just shoveling stuff into trash bags (yes, it had gotten bad). Yes, maybe I should have done that BEFORE my trip to the transfer station but I had a full car as it was, and this is dry stuff that can sit in my garage okay.

Or anyway, I can stop doing it for a bit now. Because about 3:30 I got a call from the Terminix inspector - he had finished his last job early and could come this afternoon. 

 And I admit, I had built that thing up into a whole THING in my head; I have issues with feeling judged so I imagined the inspector going over every corner of my house and tutting about any of the dust or the clutter and all of that. Yes, he was mainly there for the termites, but I had also mentioned that I catch the occasional mouse in the house with traps, and I was concerned.

Well, he looked at the mud tube first. Walked all around the house and just as I thought - there was just the single tube. He said they were subterranean termites, which are native and are the least-bad kind. He congratulated me on recognizing the mud tube for what it was (I explained I taught soil science), that most homeowners ignore them. He also said it looked like it was the veriest beginning of the infestation - so it will be easy to treat. (I paid for a full year of treatment and inspections; probably should have been doing it all along - I tend to be penny wise but pound foolish at times). They inject an insecticide right where the infestation is, and then put bait stations around the house to both monitor, and to kill any termites that may be hanging around.

As for the mice? He didn't go into the house because he said all they did for mice and rats was either put out glue boards (he saw me wince and said "yeah I don't think they're very humane either") or live traps (and then cart the animals out to a field and let them go? to make more mice and rats?). He said my snap traps were probably a good solution, and noted that the repairs I'm getting on the house will also greatly reduce the problem. As will keeping the brush and weeds cut back around the foundation - I had let that get bad (and that was largely two weeks ago's efforts). He also said that would reduce roaches, and ants, and probably cut the chances of more termites. 

Anyway. The tech will call me tomorrow and they'll be starting the termite treatment. 

It'll be weird though not to be racing home from work to put in a couple hours deep cleaning and decluttering - that's mostly done anyway (as I said: the last bits in the closet I can pick away at as I have time)