Christmas Cleaning.
Christmas Cleaning.
We are forced to do a Christmas cleaning in the truck. Not any ordinary Christmas cleaning, but Christmas cleaning al la mamma where every thing is taken out of the cupboards and investigated carefully with a critical eye. What is not wanted is thrown away, that is if father does not get his fingers in the bags before they get out to the trash-bin, then it can be quiet a few valuables that disappear. So many valuable things that when the daughter of the home starts looking at old photographs and sees an image of here mother in a nice dress things get complycated.
"Wow what a nice dress mama! where is it"?
"Oh this one. I threw it a way somewhere in the 80s.": Is the answer.
After every thing has been thrown out of the house that is possible to throw away, the big cleaning starts and rearranging of every object in the house. Accompanied by dusting the clothes and refolding and organizing them. Professionals might possible see any difference in the house, but I have a difficulty with that in the darkness that surrounds Christmas in Iceland. Except maybe in the cupboards where the tin food is. It is a bit more organized than before.
The strangest thing I always found was when she took all the books out, the cover washed with water and soap and then the book held face down and shaken so that the pages shook like leafs in wind until all the microscopic dust particles that possibly could have entered Laxnes or Alister Maclean since last Christmas flew into the air and landed on the miniatures of very fragile animals that she just had washed so equally carefully as they where a new born baby.
Not that my mother is any cleaning freak, far from it. She actually knows nothing more boring but she learnt this from here mother but I did not inherit this genes.
I am to busy when it gets closer to Christmas working, go to concerts, book readings, walking town looking at all the lights and decoration in shop windows and peoples homes, drink glogg, light the candles and try to decide what I want for Christmas. On top of that I help Kristjan making the Christmas confetti and chocolates so all the material that he bought for truckloads of money wont go to waste and then I listen to Christmas songs on the radio and swear a bit over all the advertisements in the television.
In the beginning of us living to gather I tried to imitate my mother but it just never functioned as well and I newer managed to bake more than two or three sorts of cookies. I had remorse over not being able to white wash every thing and rearrange every thing in the cupboards.
Today I have no remorse and just go to mothers to get coffee and cookies which is much more fun both for me and her than being alone in the kitchen baking.
I did learn a very good trick on one of the conventions that nurses held in USA one year. You just buy a bottle of cleaning liquid with fresh pine needle sent. Then you put a good deal in the prop or in a glass and put it on the top shelf. Then you just loosely clean the surface of every thing with a cloth and there is no need to lift up every thing, but just stroke around things (the maine reason I have light colored shelving), then you light some scented candles and have a good time with the family and friends. The scent from the bottle cap fills the house with nice cleaning aroma and no one knows any thing about dust. It is any ways so dark.
I decided every Christmas to do in stead a more thorough spring cleaning because it made more sense to me and I more likely to see the results in the bright lights of spring just like in the advertising for the cleaning liquids. But then spring comes and then I have to do this and that and this and that and in the end the bottle cap just ends up on the top shelf. I mean who wants to waste his life away cleaning!
By now all my relatives, friends and the guy that comes to read on the electricity meter are thinking, but Guðný it is O.K to clean once in a while. I can agree to that and I am at the moment gathering the nerves to do it, I just have to finish writing one more article before I start.
The rain season has been now more than 6 months. It has been nothing to complain over. Usually it just have been refreshing showering in the afternoon , at least in Mexico but then it started raining heavily and we just escaped Villahermosa in Tabasco before it flooded. There where showers now and then in Belize but then it rained a lot in Guatemala and especially while we where sick and could not move, let alone clean.
I found out, to my horror that the car is starting to mold. In Iceland old bread molds in the cupboards and you just throw it away but here any thing that is of organic material molds even leather and wood and at this moment all the kitchen utensils are in hot bleach bath. It is fortunately only mold that sits on the surface of things and therefore it is possible to wash it away, but we need to take every thing out of every cabin and cupboard and clean it. That is probably the reason why Kristjan that usually wakes up early is still asleap.
It is of course very boring as we are in one of the most beautiful cities in Central America, Antigua where we are going to celebrate Christmas. We managed to find a street in good neighborhood to park the car. Pay the guards a little bit of money for watching out for the car and there is a beautiful garden her by the side. We went down town yesterday and where enchanted by the beauty of the town, but more of that later. Now I have to roll up the sleeves , get the gloves and one to and three, START CLEANING.
P.S I think mother will be proud.
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