Episode 06 How Much Is the Estimate for Professional Cleaning?

The story returns to the time right after Yoko’s father's funeral. Yoko's son, Yoshikuni, contacted a used bookstore to find out how much all his grandfather’s books were worth.  

Yoko’s father loved reading books and had not hesitated to spend money on them since his youth. The main house and annex were filled with books and bookshelves.

Since he was an English and social science teacher, he read many books about the global situation, history, literature, and so on. He also bought many books for his children and read for them daily when they were little. Later, his grandchildren enjoyed reading them when they visited their grandparents.

One wall of the home office in the main house had wall-to-wall bookshelves, and nine others were in the Japanese-style room, father's bedroom, the porch, and the hallway. The Western-style room and annex also had wall-to-wall bookshelves. By the time Shigeru passed away, the number of books had reached over 3,000.

Yoko vaguely thought, without any basis, that it would be at least 300,000 yen if they sold all the books. However, the estimate that she got from a used bookstore was only 30,000 yen.

“The collection of books that Dad spent so much time and money on, and the books that we and our children enjoyed reading, are only worth 30,000 yen.''

"If it's only going to be that little, let’s just leave them as is for now. I'll think about it again when I really need to clean them up.”

After the first-year memorial service of her father on September 2018, Yoko started working towards turning the annex into a guesthouse.

She returned to Yodoe again for a meeting with the architect on November 3 and 4 and decided to start annex renovation from November 21. At the same time, she asked the architect for an estimate for cleaning up the main house.

On November 18, before the renovation started, Yoko returned to Yodoe again to clean up the annex (mainly moving things to the main house). That day, the architect came to have a meeting and provided her with an estimate for the main house cleanup.

 Yoko vaguely thought the cost would be around 300,000 yen without any evidence. However, the estimate turned out to be 727,380 yen, including tax. If disposing of items that had been stored in the garage and annex were included, it would cost about 1 million yen (including tax).

Yoko called Shu with a surprise.

“It would cost about 1 million yen to dispose of unnecessary stuffs, including the bamboo storage area in the rice field and the garage. I thought it would be about 300,000 yen.''

"That's what I thought, too."

Then, Shu’s wife, Atsuko, spoke up.

“I often watched TV shows about the house clean up, so I knew it would cost that much. “

"I see. I had no idea."

"Me, neither. If it costs that much, why don't we leave the main house as it is for a while?"

“Tomorrow, my friend Kumiko Sahara is coming to visit me in Yodoe with some interesting young people from Osaka. I'll ask them to look at the house and ask their opinions.”