1.3 March: Clean Up

It’s been a few days since Yuri arrived at the dacha and even though he had nothing else to do, most of the things that arrived with him were still unpacked and scattered all over the place, making it quite difficult to move around the house. 

The only thing he had put away was food items, stashing them away into their respective places in the kitchen. The task seemed pretty easy when he first thougth about it, but once he actually started doing it, he  came to the realization that he needed to organize everything in such a way that would make it easy and logical to find whatever he would need. Putting all types of spices in one cupboard near the stove, non-perishable can items in another cupboard and diary products into the fridge. Finally after twenty minutes of working on putting food away, he decided that was enough work for the day. 'I'll finish everything tomorrow.' He thought, but how wrong he was. A few days passed and nothing was done.

“I guess I should start with cleaning out one of the bedrooms.” He said to himself while opening a door to one of the designated bedrooms. His mother had told him that the house already had bedframes and mattresses so there was no need to go out of their way and bring a whole entire bed to the dacha. 

Mother was right of course, both the bedrooms had a bed frame and a mattress that were covered with plastic sheeting, as did all the other furniture in the house, to avoid dust settling on them. Yuri had already checked on the bedrooms the day he arrived hoping they wouldn’t need much cleaning or fixing, but when he opened the door and scanned the situation, he slowly closed the door and decided it was a problem for another day.

Instead he just laid down a blanket on the floor in the living room, in a corner that was free of boxes and bags. He put a pillow and another blanket on top of it, creating a makeshift temporary bed and slept there for the last few nights. It was not comfortable to say the least, especially because the old creaky floors made noise every time he moved. 

This sudden noise made Yuri freeze in fear at night when trying to fall asleep. His mind always running to two conclusions, one; someone broke into the house and he was going to be murdered and left to lie here in his cold blood (the fact that he was not able to close the heavy rusted front metal gates did not help comfort him). Or two; there were mice running around in the house. For Yuri, the second option was a horrifying nightmare, and so he’d shut his eyes silently praying for it to be a murderer and not a rat. And then he’d move a little, in turn making the floor creak, making him realize that the earlier noise was also his doing. Trying to fall back asleep he’d curse himself in his head for being so stupid.

The pain of his aching back and the exhaustion Yuri felt from the last few sleepless nights motivated him to clean up a bedroom for himself. Now standing inside the room, it felt like the dust was clinging onto him and he felt like he was inhaling too much of it. If there was anything that Yuri hated, it was dust. His nose tingled and constantly feeling like he was halfway to sneezing but never actually sneezing. "Fuck, I hope inhaling all these dust particles won't make me sick." He muttered while covering his nose he walked to the window and opened it with a struggle.

With his back to the room, he felt overwhelmed, and even though he wasn’t claustrophobic, it felt like the space was enclosing onto him. He stared out the window, counting his every inhale and exhale, hoping that looking out of the window would help ease his uneasy feeling. After he had relaxed a little bit,  he began cleaning up the room, starting with wiping down any dust surface, and getting rid of the cobwebs. Finishing one task, he’d jump onto the next one without stopping. Sweeped and mopped the floor, wiped the window and the walls and steam cleaned the mattress. The cleaning was done and he went searching through the bags and boxes for fresh bed sheets, three minutes went by and he couldn’t find them, flopping down on the floor. His burst of energy and motivation to clean was ruined and he no longer had any left to make the bed.

“Damn it, this sucks.” Tears of frustration started welling up in his eyes and everything blurred. “Where the fuck are the stupid bedsheets, seriously ruined my flow and now I don’t want to do shit.” Wiping the tears away he slowly and lethargically continued searching. Finally he had found the bedsheets and fixed his bed with whatever willpower he had left. Before floppin onto it like a dead fish.

"I'm done."