Cleaning out the chimney

Last night I decided to clean out the chimney base, where the ashes from fires collect. I've been in the house for 16 years now, so I figured it was probably time.

So I opened the door in the basement and started shoveling the ash into a large heavy duty garbage bag. Scoop after scoop of ash until I surprisingly filled the whole bag. I thought, wow, that's a lot of ash.

I grabbed another. And filled it.

And another. Filled it.

And another. While shoveling, I found a barely burned piece of paper. I read it, and it was a letter from Gerald Ford, dated 1976, requesting money for the republican party.

I thought, wait... This hasn't been cleaned out since before 1976?

So I filled that bag and thought "I'm only doing one more bag". So after filling 5 bags with ashes from fires from probably the last 50-75 years, I called it a night.

It's amazing how any job I tackle in this house turns out to be a much bigger job than I had planned on. I thought I owned my house, but in reality, this house totally pwned me!