Cleaning up a mess, any mess, has a certain order.
But not everyone knows where to start.
Is there a starting point?
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Cleaning up a meth-house seems like an easy task.
A house on a dark dead end road starts attracting people late at night, all night, every night.
They come and go in a short time span.
Sometimes they drive down, sometimes they park and walk down.
Sound suspicious to you?
A neighbor has video of a drug deal in front of my house.
Shocking, I know. When you live in the ‘hood what would you expect?
But my house is located on a hill among other hilly houses all jammed in so more people can feel good about their address.
In the normal world my cul-du-sac would hold six or seven houses; I’ve got two.
When the meth people started zombie walking after their last hit started wearing off, one neighbor started calling the non-emergency police line.
Since then I’ve had two SWAT teams in front of my house, someone sentenced to prison, the meth house sold, the meth-estate sale held.
Local police warned residents about interfering with the meth folks.
“They are unpredictable and you might get shot.”
It’s been going on for years and years with no relief until now.
Everyone packed up and moved on.
We’ve had a month of clear air. Now the red car is showing up again; the mule is swaggering up the street; the email chain is on high alert.
Is it Morning In Meth Town again? All of the legal cleaning up didn’t work?
Where to begin. Again.
Cleaning Up Someone Else’s Mess
I’ve had some work done.
Not that work, not botox and filler kind of work.
The kind of work done is dusty: Saw dusty, tile dusty, quartz countertop dusty.
Most of the dust stays in the driveway, but not all.
The crew cleans up after each day and I clean up after them.
Follow the BoomerPdx Clean Up Rules:
Wife: When are you going to clean up. You said you’d start an hour ago.
Me:
Wife: Are you there? Where are you?
I’m out vacuuming the driveway, then blowing it off, working my way to the kitchen where the most quartz dust is.
Quartz Dust?
Our contractor cut our quartz countertop in our home over two years ago. He cut the hole where the stove goes, everything else was cut off the property. What is the likelihood of acute silicosis?
As the others have pointed out, your likelihood of silicosis is zero from this incident unless you had your face right up in the dust cloud while the cutting was going on and you never cleaned after the contractor left so that the remaining settled dust could be stirred into the air every time you use your lawn blower inside the house. 
Your most dangerous moment during the cutting (assuming you were hovering and snorting the cloud) would have been inhaling burned epoxy fumes.
I started in the driveway, then the walkway, to the hallway, to the kitchen.
I wiped every surface with a rag and water.
The quartz dust clings to vertical surfaces, so wipe all the countertops, cabinet doors, inside the silverware drawer.
Next I’m climbing on top of the counters to wipe down the wall decorations, ceramic chickens, and cabinet tops.
Hot Tip: If you run an air cleaner, make sure the filter is out of the plastic bag for best results.
Set Boundaries On The Clean Up
Remember, you’re not cleaning up the world, just your part that you can’t live with.
If it’s construction dust you’re working on, start out beyond the dust in the driveway and work in toward the cutting and grinding site.
Start on the sidewalk. Suck up all the dust on the driveway, the garage, in the house.
Mop the floors, vacuum the rugs and furniture.
Get that shit out of there.
Since the kitchen countertop got grinded on for a new sink, that’s where the most of the dust settled.
No one wants to eat quartz dust; no recipe in the world ever included a sprinkling of quartz dust.
Review: Identify problem for cleaning up.
Set boundaries of the infected area.
Use tools that don’t spread the problem.
About David Gillaspie
