Baile Rochel: Trying to Clean

This was first conceived as a regular blog post, but then when I was towards the end of writing it, I realized that not only would some of you consider it funny, but you'd think I was exaggerating... Honestly, it's 100% accurate! Yes, I'm the one and only Baile Rochel, and this is all true!

First of off, to be perfectly honest, I'm an awful housewife. Granted that I can cook and I do love hanging out the wash--problems are with folding and putting it away... But basic cleaning of windows, floors, dusting, decluttering ad nauseum are just... ignored or done too infrequently. Of course it doesn't help that our double windows, which do help keep the house at a "reasonable" temperature sort of, were so badly planned, some are literally impossible to clean, but that's another story...

Well, yesterday I was home alone and decided to find a way to clean the blinds in the dining area. I couldn't attempt the ones in the living room, since my husband has a ton of books under them. They have been awfully dusty for years. I guess that some people know how to take them down and wash them in the bathtub and then put them up again. But I don't have any construction engineers in my house, certainly not any more.

So I figured that all I'd need would be a good long-handled brush and a tub or pail with multi-purpose cleaner slightly diluted. That shouldn't be too hard. But I couldn't find a suitable brush it the house. The one I found had very rough bristles, OK for the bathroom tiles, but not the blinds. And then I discovered that I must have used up all of my multi-purpose cleaners, and the floor cleaners didn't seem suitable when I checked all the info on the container.

So, off I went down to the grocery store, way to the back where all the cleaning supplies are kept. There was no familiar looking multi-purpose cleaner, the type I'd buy every year or two and had used up. It must have been a very long time since I had last bought any.  Finally I found two types of spritzy things, one mostly for windows and the other, not sure. It did claim to be a multi-purpose cleaner... Then I looked for a brush. No long-handled brush. The closest thing was a children's broom. A young neighbor looked at me a bit strangely. All I had in my hands, I hadn't even taken a shoppingcart, were those two liquid cleaners and a kiddie broom. I told her that I was looking for a long-handled scrub brush, and she admitted that she, too, needed one. So, I proposed a deal, if one of us ever finds one, we'll get two.

Considering the weight of the cleaners, I was pretty lucky that a neighbor drove me all the way up the hill home. I got to work pretty quickly and made quite a mess.

Of course, I forgot to prepare lots of rags and newspaper. So, in the middle of the mess I had to take off my rubber gloves and search.

Nobody in their right mind, or with halfway decent vision would say that the windows and blinds look really clean and sparkling, but they do look much better, at least to me.

uncleaned blind; look at dust/sand

cleaned, sans sand/dust

The windows still look awful, but I know that there's less dirt, sand dust on the ones I cleaned. I used oodles of the cleaning liquid, which did not come in large 3 liter containers. I'll check out what multi-purpose liquid cleaners they sell in Rami Levy. Hopefully, this cleaning adventure will get the "cleaning bug" out of my system for a while....

PS Some of you may remember that just as I was about to do my "heavy" Passover cleaning this year, three days before the Holiday, my father passed away, so many things weren't done at all.