Elbow grease

Well there's something I never thought I'd write about! But I just made a quick trek to the kitchen, which is across the apartment from my room, and couldn't help but revel in the non-sticky floors and the sparkling metal surfaces in the kitchen. That's what I did today.

In our apartment, we rotate cleaning weeks between the four of us; the standard is that if it's your week, you do the little stuff like take out the trash, wipe down counters, and, the bigger one: clean the floors.

This is not an easy task. First of all, our entire apartment is tiled, so the easy vacuum-and-you're-done approach doesn't work. Second of all, things get dirty here--FAST. Even the air is dirty; every time you walk into the apartment, between your clothes and your shoes, you're bringing a crap-ton of dirt with you, which will soon be coating every horizontal surface.

And for the past few months, we've been sweeping (in humidity, this tactic is less than effective), and then cleaning the floors with whatever we could scrounge--at first we used torn up rags and our feet, then discovered that we have a floor-cleaning apparatus (somewhat like a Swiffer) to which we can attach rags and push around the floor. The only problem is that, no matter whether we used water, Windex, or some other sort of floor cleaner, the floor never *really* got clean, it just got greasy.

So this week, I decided to go old school. I went out, bought a *real* mop and the cheapest bucket I could find (it's giant and pastel pink, but who cares!), and brought it home to fill it up with plain old water and dish soap. I rolled up my sleeves, slipped my iPod in my pocket and got to work.

It was disgusting how fast that water turned black. Our apartment is big by Taiwanese standards, but is by no means a mansion, yet in the course of mopping the kitchen, dining room, living room, hallway, and bathroom, I had to change the water 5 times. Like *had* to change it. My theories seem to have been proven true: all that dirt wasn't going anywhere! But now it has: down the drain. Fantastic.

In all, I cleaned for about 4 hours today, beginning with a thorough scrub-down of the kitchen with bleach water before moving on to the floors and the bathroom and, finally, my own room. The apartment looks great, and I feel like I actually got a work out, scrubbing nasty stains off the back splashes in the kitchen and working out the little gummy spots and the floor that no other cleaning device could quite dislodge. It feels good to have cleaned so hard, and to be able to see the outcome. Now if only we could keep it this way...

It's great to see what a little sweat and extra effort can get you.