Cleaning House
This past Saturday rolled around pristine in its unbridled potential. It was sunny as anything and yet the morning was laced with a crisp autumn tinge. This type of day is perfect for a Cape Town tour – for getting into the car, heading out to somewhere pretty and spending the larger part of the daylight hours lounging about on a picnic blanket. If you haven’t left all your chores for the weekend, that is.
So, instead of breaking in the new picnic set my Dad got me, I had to venture into the mayhem that is post-payday CBD to buy groceries. This was fine as I got up early and missed the worst part of the Great Consumerist Marathon. The trouble started when I got home with my brand new mop and wheelie bucket. The plan was to give the whole flat a top-to-bottom cleaning that would leave my accommodations sparkling clean and me in a haze of domestic bliss. Things did not quite work out that way.
I had allocated an hour each for the kitchen, bathroom, lounge and bedroom. This would leave me a sizable portion of the afternoon to relax and enjoy my newly-found domestic competency. So, I put on my old shirt and shorts and ventured into the kitchen. Feeling very virtuous, I proceeded to pack everything off the shelves in order to give them a good scrubbing. Everything was going smoothly until I got up on a chair and took a gander at the top shelves. What had previously been a lovely aquamarine surface was now caked in at least eight years worth of dirt and grime. Now, there are people who would be able to ignore this fact, get down from the chair and pretend that nothing had ever happened. Not me. I broke out the Handy Andy and Scotchbrite scouring pads and put my back into it.
Suffice it to say, I stumbled out of the kitchen in a very grumpy mood three hours and two desecrated scouring pads later. Andries, who had been sitting in the lounge with his headphones on, working on some or other graphic layout on his MacBook was quite perturbed at the sight of me in all my sweaty, swearing glory. So perturbed was he, that an offer to do the vacuuming was brought forward. I can only imagine what kind of look I must have had on my face to spur this uncharacteristic helpfulness. There is only one kind of emotion that drives a man to vacuum and that is fear; cold and icy fear.
To celebrate the fact that I had persevered in the face of such a challenge, we called up Rouve and had an impromptu soiree in my newly arranged lounge area from where we could keep a close eye on the Earth Hour proceedings (which turned out to be a great letdown).
In the end I have to say I am glad that I did it; because the very fact that I have a kitchen to clean is a blessing, and the fact that I am capable of physically doing so, another. Pretty cool, whichever way you look at it.
