Cleaning Day

At the moment, my semester is in a bit of a lull. Midterms are over and final projects are just now being assigned. I have one week of light homework and then the following week is our (ridiculously late) Spring Break. There will undoubtedly be an end of semester crunch, but today I don't have anything pressing to work on.

It is lucky that my light work load fell on this weekend, because yesterday was cleaning day at Menno House. This twice yearly event requires that every resident washes, scrubs and paints from 10am to 6pm on Saturday. We each had a schedule and a list of tasks, and while there were some specific instructions, the general idea was "if it has a surface that can be cleaned, clean it." In the morning I cleaned a utility closet and helped with the kitchen. In the afternoon I swept, washed, and painted the front steps. The best part of that was that after I painted a step I was supposed to watch and pick out any dirt or debris that blew in and stuck to the paint--which proved to be nearly impossible. After that I took apart one of the fridges and wiped down every surface, and the day ended with cleaning the baseboards in the hallways and scrubbing between the bars of the railings.

It was completely exhausting, and this morning I woke up pretty sore (I think most of that was from bending down to paint the steps, but probably also because I am pathetic and weak). However, it is sort of amazing that the house gets cleaned that deeply twice a year. With eleven residents, a constant stream of guests and friends, and the general pollution in New York, a place can get pretty filthy in six months. But then again, how often do most people scrub out their kitchen drawers, wash the shelves in their refrigerator, and dust the tops of their door frames? It felt kind of good. Once it was over I put in some time sprawled lifelessly on the couch, and then I roused myself to go out to dinner for a plate of curly fries.