Ireland day 1582. Tuesday 27 January 2026- Cleaning Up

Today’s summary	Spent the whole day in the flat cleaning and packing, ready for our departure.   Broke midway through for leftover Thai curry for lunch.   Made a couple of calls related to tax and then returned to cleaning in the afternoon.  Filled several bags with rubbish and with things for the charity shop.   In the evening, had the leftover cottage pie with some red cabbage left from Christmas for dinner, with a nice bottle of red wine given to Val by her colleagues.
Today’s weather	Wild and wet all day as Storm Chandra slowly passed through.   Gale force south easterly wind.  Appx 8c
Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)			Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (No GPX today)

Commentary

Renting a property has lots of advantages – like the flexibility to move if you don’t like it, and the lack of responsibility for things that go wrong.   But when you’re renting, you tend to move more frequently, which means you have to pack your stuff up and clean the property each time you set off to a new home.

We’ve “only” been in our apartment in the Casino Malahide for four and a half years, which is quite a short time in comparison to the length of time we have spent in most of the houses we have owned (though actually I think quite a long time for tenants in the Casino).   Anyway we are in the midst, now, of getting ready to move out, and although the vast majority of our belongings have already made their way across the Irish Sea, there are still quite a lot of things left to be sorted out, rationalised, and either packed or disposed or taken to the charity shop.

The packing process is well-defined and it’s clear in its scope.   It’s basically just everything we have put in the flat.   But the cleaning is much more indefinite.  Our lease just says that the property has to be left in a suitable condition for someone else to move into – but of course what “suitable” means very much depends on your frame of reference.   So we are erring on the cautious side, and trying to get the property up to the (fairly high) standard we would expect if we were moving in ourselves.

Reaching this standard is proving to be unexpectedly hard.   Already, in the time we have been here, dust has built up in odd corners behind doors, in cupboards and under beds.  Layers of grease have accumulated round the cooker, limescale has built up in the bathroom, scuff marks have appeared on the floor, and layers of sticky gunge of an indeterminate nature have built up on some of the more out-of-sight skirting boards.   All had to be exposed to the light of day and removed through the extensive application of elbow-grease.

I think we are both quite pleased with what we have achieved so far, though it’s really hard work and we are only halfway through.   We’re running out of time, too, which means I guess we will still have some fairly long days still to come.   But it’s worth it, as we are very keen to get the whole of our deposit – which was well over €2000 – back, and getting it all is contingent on returning the flat in a state that our landlord subjectively deems to be acceptable.   Anyway we will do our best and see what happens.

So today was a day which was devoted pretty much 100% to cleaning and packing – and mostly the former.   We started at about 11 am and didn’t finish until mid-evening.   We did of course find time to fit in lunch and dinner.   Which were, respectively, re-heated Thai curry from last night, and re-heated cottage pie from a few days ago, with some of the red cabbage I’d made for Christmas and had frozen.   Tasty, nutritious and quick – which was just what a couple of hard-working domestic operatives needed.   Oh, and I fitted in a couple of calls about tax, too, by way of light relief.

Finally, we have finished for the day.   We’re settling down to enjoy the remainder of a nice bottle of red wine that Val’s colleagues very kindly gave her by way of a leaving present.  Plus, for later, I’ve got my eye on a rather nice bottle of white wine that our son and his wife brought back for us from Corsica.   We’ve been saving it for a special occasion, and if moving home from one country to another isn’t a special occasion, I don’t know what is.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)

Rain-lashed flat – Storm Chandra definitely making his presence known this afternoon (and indeed for most of the last two days).   Actually it meant it was the perfect day for being incarcerated in the flat with no outdoor temptations to lure us away from the cleaning
The flat is beginning to look very empty now..

Interactive map

(No map today)

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