Monday 5 January 2015

Oh how I ache...

Wow.  I am beat.

I have spent the last 4 days cleaning a 2 storey house from top to bottom.  My best friend and her husband are moving out of their rental into their first home.  They just finished getting it built - yay for them!  :)  It does mean though that they are a bit short on spare cash at the moment and so can't afford to hire someone to exit clean for them. 

Enter best friend.  It sucks, but it's part of the contract, right?  Bestie to the rescue!

I don't think I have worked so hard to clean a house since I moved to my unit 2 years ago.  And I had to clean that all by myself, because I lived too far away for anyone to help me.  I made the decision then - and it was confirmed for me these past few days - that I am stumping up the money for someone else to clean for me when I move out of this flat, whenever that happens.

Well, anyhow, I spent the last four days on my hands and knees scrubbing and washing and wiping dry every single corner of that house.  It's a poorly built house, with no insulation, so on a hot, humid sunny day of 32*C (90*F) - inside it was probably another 10*C hotter than that. (Note 42*C = 107.6*F).  Did I also mention that it's two-storeyed?  And because I'm taller than my bestie, I got all the jobs that involved going up the step ladder to clean the ceiling.

And before you point out who cleans the ceiling?! can I point out that this house was built so it is exposed beams/rafters?  They needed dusting at the very least, on top of the cobwebs that had accumulated.  And, as we know, heat rises.  I was sweating and dripping everywhere *shudder*.  It got to the point where my sweat wasn't even salty any more X-P  I was worried, but realised it was okay because at least I was still sweating.  It's when you're hot and no longer sweating that is a worrisome sign for heat stress. 



And still speaking of cleaning the ceiling, the living room ceiling was terrible.  At first we thought maybe were were cleaning off parts of the paint (the ceiling was a yellowy colour, leaving cream underneath) when we were spot cleaning.  But the more we cleaned the ceiling the more we realised we were not cleaning paint off or dust.  Because dust would have turned the water black.  The bucket of water was definitely a yellow colour.  About halfway through the ceiling we realised we were quite probably cleaning off someone's nicotine residue.  EWWW!!  The end result being we had to clean the entire ceiling for the living room.  Yuck.

And the kitchen.  Sheesh.  I'm exhausted just thinking back.  Took us a day and half to do the entire kitchen & dining.  The oven wasn't too bad, but the stove top was ick.  On Saturday, after we'd already been going for two days, Bestie's natural mum and husband came round to help.  Bestie tried to keep them outside, but Faye kept coming inside every now and then.  Kept moving things that we were using.  And going back into the rooms that we'd already cleaned.  Or trying to clean the kitchen bench when we were still standing on it to clean the top of the kitchen cabinets.  *Rolls eyes*  Poor bestie.  She was so over it by then.  There was a reason she was trying to keep Faye outside.  Faye is a great one for not listening (or hearing) what others are saying to her.  Even her eye contact is elusive.  It's difficult to communicate with her.  Which I tried to keep in mind and remember.

Faye and I got into a misunderstanding about whether I had cleaned the cooktop or not.  I thought I had.  I spent over an hour scrubbing just around the hot plates alone, then another hour on degreasing the rangehood, the stove controls and the rest of the cooktop.  Faye comes over later in the afternoon and asked "has anyone cleaned the stove yet?"

Now, quite possibly I took this the wrong way, but I tried not to let my frustration show.  I simply replied with "Oh?  Doesn't it look clean?  Damnit.  Alright, I'll go over it again."  Faye just looked at me blankly for a minute.  I repeated that "actually, yeah, I have cleaned it, at least, I thought I did."  And Faye straight away backed off with "oh nononono, have you already cleaned it? I'm sorry.  I didn't know. I didn't know."

And that was the line that got to me.  If she's looking at it, and can't tell if it's been cleaned or not, then evidently it is not clean enough. It bothered me because I thought I did a good job.  I broke two fingernails for that stove! :D  And it looked miles better than before.  But if Faye took one look and couldn't tell that it had been scrubbed and cleaned, then I guess I'm a shitty cleaner. 

I was trying to be careful with the cleaning because I didn't want to scratch the brushed stainless steel finish, nor wipe away what was left of the dial markings.  Faye just went in there hell for leather with a can of that god-awful caustic oven cleaner chemical.  Gack!  I ended up copping a lungful - and then nearly coughing up a lung!  I guess after three days, there was only so much chemical and dust and mould and dog hair inhalation my body was willing to take.  I spent most of Friday sneezing 14 times in a row.  My ribs still hurt : (

By the way, this is the type of cooktop I'm talking about.  As far as I know, they're not designed for caustic oven cleaner.  

Bestie and I were both happy with how it had cleaned up (by the time I was done) and were just going to give it a wipe with metho right at the end, when we were done, just to get it all pretty shiny and have no streaks.  We both tried explaining that to Faye, but she's a brilliant one for not listening (or hearing) people. 

So of course, once she was done going over it, she steps back and asks how it looks.  I honestly (and not spitefully) couldn't see the difference.  Faye of course could.

I guess another thing that annoyed me was that Faye only came for the one day - Saturday, whilst Bestie and I had been hard at it since around 8am New Years Day.  Two previous whole days of cleaning, while Faye and her husband only came on the Saturday, so of course that's all they saw.  *Sigh*

Just reminds me yet again how I am going to hire someone to clean my house when I move.  I couldn't go through all of that again.


1 comment:

  1. Sounds horrible! But probably a great workout! My first rental, I cleaned myself. The agent wasn't happy with the job and deducted money from my bond for a cleaner. Fair enough, too, I wasn't much of a cleaner. After that I just hired someone. So worth the money. If you had been paid for you work for your bestie (not that you were asking), how much per hour x how many hours? A cleaner probably would have charged less than your time was worth.

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