Mr. Duct

If you are having people come work on the house, you might hope that your house looks as nice and tidy as the photo above (in reality, that is 5338 Larkspur Lane in Woodridge, which is currently for sale and why it looks spotless :D). However, I was busy and almost forgot that the guys from Mr. Duct were coming last Friday, much less planned to clean ahead of time. They bring an industrial vaccum the size of a car and about 500 feet of snaky hoses to shove down your ducts and clean out all the spiders, dust and mold that may have taken up residence there. So when they arrived on Friday after noon, right on time, everything was pretty chaotic here..aka "normal".

Sewing projects, cat covers on the upholstery, curtains with different hem lengths (curtains are always too long in this house), weird decos, multiple computers, cat toys...and the duct guys have to look in closets, because we have the returns go there for some inscrutable reason instead of the floor like a normal house. And we have a glue closet. (Doesn't everyone have a glue closet?) OK there is tape in there too. And suet for the birds, which is cheaper in bulk.

Also we have a decrepit couch and many cat toys (the couch is a cat toy).

We also now have crystals from JoAnns hung up in a lot of the windows because we have had problems with birds crashing into them--the downside of a feeder. I'm thinking of getting a string of Tibetan Prayer flags for the sun porch because they act like car lot flags but they look less plastic and cheesy, and I need something on the outside for the porch as it is 90% windows. 

The Mr. Duct techs were good natured about all this; they cheerfully helped us move stuff, checked to be sure the cat was where the cat should be (on the porch, under a table with a dish of food and water, hiding out), and told us the Grossest Story Ever told about using a shop vac to discover a HUGE live rat in a duct, to the dismay of all involved. In our house, they removed enough cat hair from the ducts to build another cat or two. Pro tip--if you lose a squirrel, rat or chipmunk down a duct, do not spell that out to the duct company dispatcher, or they will want you to call animal control (even if it is very dead). Just say you have noticed a smell and the vents don't seem to work well. The techs know what that is code for and the dispatcher will go ahead and assign you a work date. Just be prepared to tip well--and have rubber gloves on hand.

When the guys finished up, they shook my hand and said the house had "good energy" which is probably the nicest thing anyone has said about my housekeeping. I think I will have them back next year.