A new lease on life

Well, not for me.

But for someone, anyway.

With Cynthia's passing, the cycle has begun anew. I am again in search of a tenant. Or resident, as I often like to refer to them.

Step one is always to prepare the room for a new resident. No matter how good the last resident was, the room will need a thorough going over. After taking care of anything left behind, I will need to go through and strip any linens, vacuum rugs and pull up the rugs and vacuum the floor. It is amazing how much dirt a throw rug can hold. I often need to go through several cycles of vacuuming both front and back of the rug to knock the dirt out them. And dust the room, look for cobwebs. There might be maintenance items that have been waiting for the right time. For the master bedroom, it was cleaning the windows. And boy did they need it. Here's a before and after. And trust me, it was a lot more dramatic in person. I won't get into details because I don't want to be embarrassed about the state they were in, but let me say again it was dramatic.

Step two is to advertise or respond to enquiries. I have a couple websites I advertise on even if I am full on the prospect that I will have an opening. The best situation would be that I have someone to take over a room as soon as it is available. The reality is that rarely happens. But I do get lucky on occasion. Today was interview day. I already had the room all cleaned up, so I took the time, about three hours, to clean the double hung windows and the storm windows. It's the sort of thing that you get done and say wow, what a difference. But then you realize that the prospective tenant will never notice. The windows should be clean, you would only notice if they weren't. Anyway, felt good to finally get around to cleaning the windows, even if no one will notice.

No big earth shattering events. The person who came by today is thinking about a future transition and they are not in an immediate need for accommodations. They are thinking several months down the road. There is a good possibility that this room will no longer be available by then, but something else maybe. It is worth talking to someone, even if nothing will come of it now. And it gave me the impetis to take care of some much needed maintenance.