I have not written in forever but I am having a time of it cleaning up after other people's mess, so here we go.
Long story short, I volunteered to volunteer at the JCN (Japan Cat Network)'s animal shelter in Fukushima for a month this summer. I arrived yesterday. It is a disaster.
Imagine several years worth of temporary vacationing foreigners coming through and not giving enough of a shit about the state of the house to be proactive about keeping it clean. They don't organize, they leave their old food (and meds, and clothes, and toiletries, and blankets, and utensils, and literally everything else) behind. It piles up. Months and months of temporary foreigners couchsurfing the place and only doing the bare minimum to keep the house (and the animals) going.
This is what I have walked into.
There is dry mouse poop in the pantry, on top of cans of food that expired in 2015. Every cat room smells like pee. Little bits of random trash can be found on almost any given corner of the house. There are bins and boxes lying around with dust on them, full of god knows what. There are bins with labels that don't contain any of the things written on them. There is a porch with blankets flung over the railing that just sit out in the rain, getting old and gross. There is no place to put anything, anywhere. Most everything is old and worn, and none of it looks like it's been touched or gone through or disposed of in years.
This is what I'm going to try to tackle for the next month.
I'm sure some good people have come through here. I'm sure they want to help animals. But the video tour from 2014 is no longer remotely relevant. The house itself is holding up well, but it needs at least half a year's worth of hardcore cleaning (from people who are actually dedicated to cleaning it). Old stuff needs to be disposed of. Inventory needs to be taken. Everything needs to be organized and labeled.
I've cleaned out the fridge, wiped down most of the shelves of the pantry, organized the food by year of expiration (most of it is in the 2015 and 2016 pile) and amassed three bags full of assorted trash. I've started doing laundry with any decent looking blankets and towels I can find. I think I'll go into the nearest empty cat room and start sweeping up as much cat litter as I possibly can, and take out any blankets or towels that look gross and wash them. (Or trash them.)
The two girls who live here have been here for several months, and they said that the other housemates' apathy towards the work made them give up. Which, fine. Whatever. If you want to leave dirty dishes on the table at night and not toss your soy milk when you're done drinking it and blame it on "giving up" because of other people's actions, fine. But I tell you what, the older I get, the fewer fucks I give about other people's actions and the more I care about taking care of what matters. And what matters is this house, these animals, and their health. What matters is the work. It doesn't matter who does it. If you have to pick up someone else's slack for a bit for the sake of caring for animals who can't, then do it.
I've got a little under a month to see how much I can get done. Let's see how much I can get done.
(And god help any foreigners who come through in the mean time expecting a cheap place to crash, because you are pulling your weight or you are OUT.)
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