Cleaning tips for house-husbands....

It's a beautiful day! Quick grab the 120 grit wet-and-dry paper and get out on the back deck!!

Ah. Small problem. We've got guests this weekend and I have been charged with sorting out the mess in the guest cabin. Actually, as it's 100% my mess: tools, more tools, the entire stock of Associated Useful Stuff (GB)Ltd, etc etc etc, that's fair enough.

So no paint today. Chiz!

Yesterday, I was doing a bit of general Pippin cleaning. As I'm a bloke, this means dismantling things, cleaning them, and re-assembling them. It takes forever, doesn't make a huge impression on the level of cleanth and morale can dip alarmingly in the process.

However, having sorted through the re-cycling for items with addresses, personal details etc on them, I fired up the woodburner for a quick incineration session. When it had cooled enough, I took the glass plates out of the front and cleaned off a winter's worth of baked-on muck with Brasso. This munches through the dirt really well. I then cleaned the oven thoroughly and did the oven window the same way.

Our tea-towels had got very grotty: we only use Ecover detergent as all our grey waste goes straight in the Cam, so bleach is a complete no-no. I got around this by soaking the towels in a bowl of bleachy water for a couple of hours. I then wrung them out into the same bowl and disposed of the bleach safely by pouring it into the holding tank (via a funnel) through the 'rinse out' hole. The towels were then thoroughly rinsed in the bowl, the rinse water disposed of the same way and the towels washed on a hot cycle in the machine. It worked really well!

So that was fun.

I also mopped three buckets of water out of the bilge in the engine-room. (The torrential rain that co-incided with my dismantling the deck drains to paint the deck had caused this.) Having roused out all the gear stowed under the cruiser deck, I left the tread plates off to let the remaining moisture and condensation dry off.

I then did a bit of dusting.....

This led to an hour's worth of Dining Table Restoration, as it wasn't responding to a quick wipe-over with Mr Sheen.... I removed the old wax and dirt (a lot of it was paint-dust from taking the cruiser deck back to bright metal) with meths, then restored the shine with lots of Briwax and elbow grease.

The wooden floor in the main saloon, companion way and our cabin was then given a thorough sweep, hoover and mop-over with 'touch wood' by Method. Lovely stuff! mops on and off, removes all the accreted crud and leaves a nice almondy smell.

The tiles in the galley were hoovered and scrubbed too.

I then went shopping and, on my return, was getting the washing in, when one of our neighbours wandered by.

"A man may work from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done" she said.

Now, she may have been employing 'the post-feminist ironic' by commenting thus, but what exactly, of any of the above, was "woman's work", for Heaven's sake?

I was scandalized!

I mean, if you want to get something done properly, you've got to get a man in.

Isn't that right, lads?!!