Keeping in clean...

I don’t think I’ve mentioned the cleaners here – not the street cleaners, but rather those household detergents that you find stashed under the sink or in a cupboard waiting for you to remember to scrub something.

They’re awesome! So potent – or possibly, too potent… I’ve yet to lose any skin but I thought I was going to lose my eyeballs – and that was with as much ventilation as possible. I think I should probably invest in some gloves too, just to ensure I keep all layers of my epidermis intact.

Anyway – I may have used too much but – I wanted to clean our gigantic tub (pics as soon as I can get Coral to get over feeling ridiculous and get in the tub to show you the dimensions) and so I squirted a steady stream of this stuff around the edges – keep in mind I’ve had to scrub this place down due to the nice thick layer of fine dust coating everything (and twice as thick on the floor), handwash* what would have otherwise been a few loads of laundry, and bath in the thing, so the tub needed to be cleaned. So the stuff is some of that cleanser that has two separate compartments that only combine when you’re using it…maybe that should have warned me… however, it didn’t. I took my sponge and after a single gentle pass the area beneath me was sparkling – literally sparkling…and I thought it was a trick of the light so I kept on wiping – not even scrubbing cause it was apparent that wasn’t necessary… Yes, just a quick pass and I had a nice shiny sparkling tub. And burning eyeballs, and a fear that maybe my skin wouldn’t all be there when I was done. It was, and now I have a clean tub.

Just in time for more laundry.

*About that – yeah, the manuals I found English translations for every appliance in the house except the washing machine – which is unfortunately less than obvious. I thought it was straightforward but was wrong so I asked my landlord how to work it and he didn’t know either. He took the manual with him so he could try to find the right website or translate it or something, but I haven’t heard back from him yet, so we’re handwashing for the time being. And they don’t use clothing dryers here so we have to air dry everything – as does everyone else – and let me tell you have HATE air-dried towels and jeans. With a passion. I haven’t figured out which of the many bottles in the local Albert are the fabric softener, but I’m hoping that will help once I get some of that squared away.

I think if someone some laundromats near the city center they’d have waves of grateful western customers begging for some dryer time. Just a thought here.