Cleaning Spree

Hola. I went on a cleaning spree and cleaned my whole house top to bottom in three days. It was tiring work but it distracted me from my problems and gave me the necessary ‘fresh start’ for the New Year that I needed.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t do this to write about it. I thought I was running out of content to write so why not do stuff to make my own content? That’s when the cleaning idea popped into my head. The walls had a fine layer of dirt on them that couldn’t be wiped away with just soap and water. The details painted on the walls had gone from pale pink to murky gray. The kitchen smelled bad, at least to my sensitive nose, and there was a whole civilization of cockroaches breeding inside crevices and behind the stove.

I decided that I’d had enough and proceeded to drive to the supermarket to buy a load of cleaning supplies. Mothballs, furniture polish, glass cleaner, steel cleaner, magic sponges, you name it. When I came back it was time to don my gloves and start working.

We started out with the kitchen (which, in my opinion, was the dirtiest). Emptied out the shelves and the cupboards; pulled out the stove and began scrubbing away. You would not believe how much dirt was under that stove. We poured soapy water on the cement block holding the stove and started scrubbing only to find ourselves knee-deep in a slurry of dirt and cockroach remains. The goop was so thick that it took more than 5 buckets of water to clean the area out and the whole kitchen floor was covered in black, mushy dirt. Granted, the kitchen hadn’t been cleaned this way since it was built but DUDE? I wouldn’t eat in a place that cultivates insects!

We scrubbed the tiles, washed the cupboards, and cleaned the appliances. We polished what had to be polished and with a final spray of bug spray, we locked the door and the windows hoping to let the insects stew in the scent of the bug spray a bit more. It was a sight when the kitchen door opened. Corpses of cockroaches littered the floor like they’d been in a battle with an unseen enemy. Some of them had crawled to safety through the small gaps between the window panes and the wall.

Cleaning that mess out we had to tackle the organization. Now the main problem was; I didn’t know what half the things in the kitchen were. Green and brown spices and weird-looking blobs of stuff (a bad description I know). I let my mom do that and proceeded to rest while waiting for the next day to tackle the bedroom and the living room.

The next day, I emptied out the bedroom. I removed the bed, the computer, the study table, everything. The magic sponge worked its magic and in no time my sister and I were down on our knees scrubbing the walls with all our energy. I cleaned the electricity sockets (it was a daunting task if you ask me because the sponge was damp and my fingers were dangerously close to the socket) and wiped the murky grime off the switches. The walls were a putrid shade of gray and the creamy white was hidden underneath.

Okay, lets’ talk about the invention of the magic sponge. It is the holy grail of all cleaning products. I don’t know what exactly it’s made of, some chemical porridge most likely, but it cleans every small dirt particle on the walls. If you haven’t used it yet, USE IT.

Finally, we laid the carpets in the room because it’s freezing cold and polished the wooden furniture. At this point, I’d been working for two days and my arms and legs were almost falling off. We picked up the furniture and set it back in place blah blah blah all that fun stuff.

The rest of the day went normal, no cleaning involved. I studied, cooked, and watched Netflix, but then, the clock hit the ungodly hour of 1 am and all my nerves started throwing blasts of electricity at each other.

Brain: GO! CLEAN! NOW!

So at 1 am, when my mom and sister were asleep, I sneaked into the living room and disassembled the furniture. I tried to be as quiet as I could and whenever the furniture made a noise I whispered, ‘Shut up, we talked about this.’ Like, yes, I talk to furniture, kill me (please).

I started scrubbing the walls with the last piece of magic sponge and washed the fake plastic plant. I had been awake for three days at this point but still, no sleep touched me. I cleaned all the paintings, all glass surfaces, polished the furniture and metal. All repetitive tasks, no brains required.

There was a point when I was scared out of my wits. It was 4 am and the door to the veranda was open. It was dark and the trees cast spooky shadows across the white tiled floor. There was a sudden movement among the shadows and I immediately launched into a prayer to scare off whatever entity was dumb enough to come near me. I quickly shut the door and continued to polish, humming to myself quietly just so I wouldn’t get scared.

Anyway, I didn’t sleep for the whole day after that. I put final finishing touches, rearranging this, polishing that, doing this and that both, and after three days of hard labor that seemed to cause a permanent build-up of lactic acid in my muscles, I finally went to sleep at night and didn’t wake up until 19 hours later.

That’s it for today; I hope you enjoyed this erratic, spontaneous post. To be honest I wrote this post about a month ago but never got around to publishing it.  Anyway, here it is, I hope you enjoyed reading this, even though it’s a mess. Take care and don’t spray bug spray in your oven.