Household maintenance chez Household Opera
I’m back in Charlottesville, and I’ve just moved into my new apartment, the one I’ll be staying in for the rest of the year. The trip homeward from Pennsylvania was instructive, in that I made two major discoveries: that unless you lift weights regularly, it’s a bad idea to test your strength by trying to haul your own weight in luggage up and down the coast, but if you must, taxicabs are your friends; and also, those irritatingly named "Smarte Cartes" don’t steer worth a damn. Oh, and if you must haul your own weight in luggage, give yourself a couple of days to recuperate afterwards. Ow.
I’m sitting on the floor typing this, because the movers won’t arrive for another couple of days. So the new abode is currently furnished solely with the aforementioned luggage, an air mattress, my laptop, a pile of books, and a phone that won’t work. Must call the company tomorrow. (But not from here. Blast.) One of my first actions was to hit the grocery store for supplies; I brought back a curious blend of practical necessities and luxury items. Plastic forks and paper plates, but also tomato pesto, rosemary bread, and bath salts. Planning for three days without cookware or a shower curtain is like planning for a camping trip but without the bug repellant or the rain ponchos.
Unfortunately, the previous tenant of this apartment was a smoker who liked to smoke indoors, and the between-tenant cleaning has not completely eradicated the smell of smoke. It’s not strong, but it’s definitely there. A little googling located a home remedy: bowls of white vinegar distributed throughout the house. One liter of vinegar later, I’m not sure there’s been much of an effect. I give it until tomorrow afternoon and another application of (perhaps stronger?) vinegar, plus some baking soda sprinkled on the carpets, before I go to the landlords and demand a re-cleaning. In a way, I’m glad that my furniture isn’t here yet, because it would be obnoxious to have to deal with all this with the place full of boxes.
That’s all for the evening. I’m off to take a fancy mineral bath to recover my aching back.
That smell… Some time back, I noticed that my apartment smelled like smoke, and I wondered what in the world could have caused it. Turned out it was coming from a book that I had borrowed from a friend who smoked. In the next room no less.
Yuck. Nothing worse than smoker’s residue. It really seems to adhere to paper; I can always tell when I grade papers which of my students smoke.
But congrats on getting (sort of) settled, Amanda!