Spring Cleaning Goes Just a Bit Further! // Blog By Hilary
For this week’s random act of kindness I want to share with you a story that just happened this week. First, I would like to paint the picture to all you readers. I live in a house with five other girls. We live in a six-bedroom, tall-ceilings, and wooden-floors type of house. It is really old, and we have come to find out that it is also really hard to take care of. With our busy schedules, we will be lucky to see just half the sink filled up with dishes by the end of the week. Finals are coming up, the economy is bad, and summer is teasing us. Our nerves are on edge. On top of this, we have been trying to get the house up to par with our landlord’s wishes. We have been told several things we must do to prevent us from getting fined. We have already scrubbed our bathroom walls, cleaned out the entire refrigerator, cleared out a storage area and swept both front and back porches. We were also informed that we must rake all the leaves in our front and back yards and pick up all sticks. Mind you, we have not done any yard work this entire year because we did not know this was something already written into our lease. So the leaves and the sticks have definitely accumulated since last summer.
Alright, I went into a lot of detail about all this but it’s for a reason. We simply are very frustrated. This week one of my room mates asked if I could help her with the raking of the leaves in the front. I reluctantly got on my shoes and coat and went out with her. We had to get this done no matter what. The plan was to do just the front yard and let some of the other roommates get the back. We ended up being outside for a good two hours. Another roommate came to help and along with her was another girl from the soccer team who just picked up a garbage bag and started gathering the leaves. She just went straight to work and started to help without any words.
For the passed few weeks I have noticed my neighbor’s yard. We barely see them and I do not think any of us have ever even talked to them. We know that they are elderly as well. A lot of debris is still covering their yard back from when the ice storm hit. Large branches and hundreds of sticks consume it. In my mind I have wanted to do something about it but just never did.
As we carried on with our own yard work we made small talk about our neighbor’s yard. I mentioned that I wanted to pick some of it up. A few minutes later another girl said that it would be nice if we would. We had already been working on our yard for awhile and we were all pretty tired. We ended up with about ten trash bags filled with leaves. I could tell we were exhausted, frustrated, and just worn out from the days work. But without hesitation or any words we all one by one started making our way to the neighbors hard. Two of us gathered all of the branches in their front yard, while one of the girls picked up the back and another began to rake their leaves. Before we knew it, their yard was spotless. They still have big piles of branches in their back yard but we really made it look good.
In my mind, I was smiling the entire time while we were working in their yard. At the beginning of the project I was cranky, and my roommate and I both wined about having to do this kind of work. But when I finally took a step back from the situation that day, and I looked at all of us diligently work, it really made me proud. It made me happy to see my friends and I just silently do the work. It’s like the act itself overpowered our tiredness. This kind of act is what I write about every week. It’s what NeighborLink is all about. It’s just great to see it happen right in front of my face. I can’t wait to be out on Saturday to see all the beautiful people working together to help others!
