Old mops and old brush at Christmas...

Never mind sorrel, ginger beer, black cake and pepperpot at Christmas, if the year rushed by, then it is bleach, soap powder, old cloth and more bleach and hands bruised and fingers withered from wiping and scrubbing and the shoulders aching because you reaching high when you don't want to climb on a chair because looking up and then looking down again makes your head swing.

The year rushed by. Time did not allow the detailed cleaning for Diwali. So this is the last chance.
Thanks to prednisolone and piriton, I am on a flow.  Soak cloth, wring cloth, wipe. The cloth is one of my old pajamas. It is soft now, leaves no water drop traces on the wall.

I reach for the mop. The mop has to be turned and twisted to reach the far corners. It has been working, two more rooms to go.

The mop stick is in my hand. The mop is there. The nail is loose. The stick is not broken. The stick has been used and reused several times. Both ends. This is the fast decaying 'upstairs mop'.  Upstairs mops become downstairs mops. I was hoping the mop would last out the cleaning and that I would buy a new mop to do the final cleaning. And so the stick is there, I try a quick thing and realise there is no way to really place another nail.

And so I go and get the downstairs mop. the blue one. It is still hardy. Still useful Old mop. I rinse it good , the water thanks to GWI is flowing nicely for the cleaning. I use bleach and so. The Mop is ragged, faded , but clean. Like me many times.

And so the downstairs mop has been promoted back to upstairs mop.  It wipes the surfaces. I wonder why I ever had demoted it to downstairs mop. Then I remember, it was last year cleaning I think when I bought the new mop for the final big clean.

So is old mop, cleaning old house. Old cloth wiping walls.   The walls are the toilet for the lizards. The stains are everywhere. There is a kind of futility in wiping as the lizards will come back.
So the old brush. It was around for years. Only used to scrub the painted walls because it is soft, and not damaging the paint. As far as I know.
The bristles fall out as I scrub. The stains come out quickly. The brush is light and nice. So after wiping and drying, then is time to sweep up the bristles . I think about buying a new brush. But I not sure if any new brush would scrub without scratching. And it would just break the flow of the cleaning. So the old brush, faithful.. eventually the bristles stop falling and I am scrubbing away. Maybe I have to scrub harder , but then the exercise is good, I tell myself.
The brush survives. I will keep it for next time.  The new mop is needed though, so the acting upstairs mop will be demoted again.

Old newspapers are good too for cleaning windows. Hands get black from the print, but the windows are nice and shine - well those parts that I could reach anyways.  Windows though, get dirty after rain. The dirtiest window looks nice. Then a heavy rain starts falling, drops blowing.

I stand in front of the window , leave it open, feel the rain and breeze all the while shining with the newspaper until the newspaper becomes wet. I then close the window after the rain is done. Nice and clean. Old newspaper did its work.

As I clean, I know that this will not last more than a month or so and the house will soon look like it need a good wiping again. But the old mops and the old brush are on my mind, still useful.

As I hope to be.