Fall Cleaning and Relocations

Usually spring is the cleaning season, but we picked fall for our storage shed on shore because it was time to put away our summer things.

Before everything was a mess and hard to reach.

The shed is suspended just about the high water mark next to the stairs leading to the upper cliff. Here we store things that can't be harmed by small critters like squirrels, mice, and woodrats (packrats). The shed has become quite full with things we no longer need or want, so one sunny fall day Wayne and I tackled this messy chore.

We hauled everything out and created two piles, trash and save. Fortunately the trash pile was larger than the save one.

Now everything is organized on shelves and in barrels.

Everything that comes up the lake has to stay, or go back down the lake to the dump. We bagged everything from old carpet remnants from when John built our cabin in 1999 to deflated water toys from summers gone by. Made me wonder who the packrats really are.

The empty shed got a good sweeping high and low. Over the years woodrats have used our shed to store their winter food supplies, and the hidden piles of foliage and scattered droppings left a huge mess on shelves and in back corners.

We purchased a small table at Canadian Tire to give us more storage space and easy access. The results were amazing, neat, tidy and clean. We vowed to keep it that way from now on.

Woodrat's cedar nest.

We started noticing that the cedar tree on our deck had branches missing. On the way down the hill, Wayne stopped in at the shed. This is what he discovered. Ms. Woodrat had moved back into her now clean home and used our beautiful tree (and many others) to made a sweet smelling cedar nest.

Ms. Woodrat ready for her boat ride to a new home.

So, it was time to catch Ms. Woodrat and take her on a boat trip across the lake. We want to save our beautiful cedar tree and other deck plants, and we want to keep our clean shed neat and rodent free. The only problem, where there's one woodrat there can be many. It may be a long fall of cleaning and relocating until winter finally arrives. -- Margy