Winter Cleaning

So here I am, in dire need of a clean house. I decided that since my husband was in Shanghai on a trip it would be a perfect time to do the spring cleaning. After all, it is winter break, there are no classes and my
kids can handle themselves when I want them to.
So I started in the kids room and worked my way through each room one at a time. I dusted, I mopped,
I scrubbed, I took apart the A/C units and took out the filters (You don't want to know how bad it was... worse yet I had cleaned them only two months ago) I took down the curtains and laundered them, I dusted and rubbed and scrubbed every visible and invisible item in the entire place.
When I had finished (It only took me two days and numerous children's videos) I felt happy, satisfied, and a little sick to the stomach to see what we have been living with. I had been mopping and sweeping since day one, but I had never taken the time to lift up the beds and haul them out of the room to clean under them. It seems that one of the beds (My bed) had not been moved in 5 years. It was just too big and heavy for the workmen and the people who usually clean the apartments between new residence to move it...
So now I want to share with you the visual image. 5 years of dust. 5 years of dust that has been layered on by the thick coal smoke that leaks in through the A/C in the winters (I have it covered and I clean the filters but the filters were never cleaned before I moved in) 5 years of dust that has been swept under the bed to hide it because China has a don't see don't clean policy. (This is also the policy for some of the restaurants, but because of Hepatitis and other issues they are starting to change that policy, which is why I have become ecstatically interested in eating off paper (Literally paper, not paper plates) and out of plastic baggies). So I scrubbed and mopped and even climbed a later to the ceiling for dusting off exposed pipes and areas that had been under construction and had never been cleaned. The workmen had knocked a hole in the wall near the ceiling so they could run electrical chords through it. You see in China they build the building first and then knock things out so they can run the electric and sewer through it. They don't make the kind of building plans that include pipes and wires, that would be much to difficult. Instead they just knock a hole in the wall whenever they need to add anything. The building we are living in, the room itself is 5 years old. They finished the 5th story of this building this year.
Just think about that for a moment. In every room there are cracks in the walls and the ceilings. Nobody wants to think about it too much because that would mean being frightened of the whole thing falling down on you. Because of the cracks and holes and various issues (Boy do I wish they had duck tape and Spackle here, I could do so much to deal with my household problems with a little duck tape and Spackle) every day I need to dust and wipe down in certain areas because the wall itself is slowly coming apart and leaving dirt behind that spreads all over the house if I let it.

Back to the point of my little message. I cleaned house. To do this I purchased laundry bleach. There are no products like Lysol, or spic and span, or Windex, or pine sol. It is impossible to find Hydrogen Peroxide and Rubbing alcohol which to me are necessary household products so I don't know why I thought I should be able to find relatively simple cleaning products. Heck, they have never even heard of WD40 so I don't know what I was thinking. But I did find bleach. In the states you can buy Clorox bleach and when you take off the cap you can smell it immediately. Well the bleach here does not smell, but it definitely is bleach (Say hello to my accidental white rag...it use to be blue). Hospitals use bleach at a ten to one ratio, so I got a bucket and did a ten to one ratio and scrubbed. And scrubbed. And scrubbed. I wiped down every surface that may have ever been touched and every surface that has been touched in the entire time we have lived here. I feel both better and worse than I expected. But the house is finally clean.I will send you pictures  as soon as I get Bill back from Shanghai (He hasn't seen the house yet, but he should know by now since every time he goes on a long trip the house looks completely different from when he left...I am a creature of habit).

All my love and don't drink the water...


_2010 Note    The water in Phoenix was undrinkable in January 2005 for some contamination reason and the entire city was on bottled water rations.  Which explains the don't drink the water message.