Or one full grown African elephant. OR 9.2 tons of rubble and debris.

!!!!!

Shoveled, bagged and removed by hand, 9.2 TONS of the craziest mixture of refuse you ever saw left the building on Dumpster Day No. 1. This house does not even know what happened to it. It wants to levitate it's so light and airy. The buildup to DD#1 saw cache of bags in strategic pockets growing on each floor as we shoveled, bagged, and lugged, weekend after weekend, distributing the weight strategically guided by our sixth sense attuned to dry rot, charred joists and questionable subfloor zones.

Thinking of the Landfill makes me sad.....

But just chuck those bags out the window!!

And they just come and get it and it's gone. Amazing. Thank you, Taylor.

We shovel, we bag, we drag, we stack. We break, eat Mexican food, and get back at it. And then we collapse and open beers with hammers and wonder how we will feel the next day. It is almost impossible (almost) to imagine this house free of debris, and the dust is as fine and airborne as volcanic ash. But I believe it was once clean and orderly. There are hints of former tidiness in the bundled letters, church service programs, fabric swatches and jars of carefully preserved mystery food stacked in the basement.

Scoop, bag, scoop, bag. It takes practice not to miss the lip of the bag. Missing the lip of the bag with a heavy scoop is maddening.

Bag stations in every corner, waiting for Glorious Dumpster Day.

Piles of swatches and rolled yarn in every floor

Basement Files

3 Asian Elephants Just Left the Building

Rubble Shovelers