Tag: #cleaning

Getting ready to welcome others back up the tower

For the first time in about 7 months we are looking forward to having other ringers in the tower with us for Sunday service #bellringing. There is still only likely to be 4 of us this week but it will make a real change to hear more bells than the usual ding and dong C and I have been doing.

Sticking to the guidance issued by the Central Council the most we can have in the tower is 6 people for no longer than 45 minutes, with masks and good ventilation.

In preparation C and I did a bit of a spring clean. We took some cleaning equipment with us, including the ostrich feather duster I blagged from conference about 6 years ago. C was in charge of the high dusting on account of his longer reach.

Whilst he did that I tackled the spiral staircase from the ringing room down to ground level, some 52 steps. That job hadn’t been done for a very long time indeed. Probably not since our deputy tower captain’s late wife last did it. I wore a mask and had glasses on to protect from breathing too much dust and cobwebs in.

I left C to do the rest of the vacuuming whilst I did my best to resemble a chimney sweep.

When I came back upstairs I hadn’t realised how dirty I’d got until I happened to see myself in the mirror. I was filthy. It was in my hair, all over my face, on my glasses and some had got through the mask so my face was covered. My neck and decolletage were covered. I had to blow my nose a dozen times before the black stuff stopped coming out.

It took us nearly an hour to complete our mission but we were very pleased to have done it.

Afterwards we bought some lunch and strawberries, cherries, grapes and raspberries from the High Street farmers market and sat in the park in the sunshine. A well earned repost.

Hopefully we’ll be up to six ringers next week but for now I’m excited at the prospect of four.

Tidy space, tidy mind – there’s an App for that!

I follow a Facebook group that posts about the Marie Kondo method of tidying, and I did start an attempt at it a while ago.  Only ever got as far as tidying out my sock drawer.  Someone mentioned on that group that they were struggling to keep on time with the continual cleaning and tidying rota.  Someone else commented that their husband was always asking what needed doing (isn’t it obvious?).  There are always a multitude of helpful answers to these sorts of dilemmas. What struck me most was that someone mentioned an app that they have on their phone that reminds them what tasks need doing and when.  Really?

I’m a curious soul so I have a wander around my Appstore and found numerous tools that will help you with how to clean, what to clean, and when to clean it. I downloaded one just to take a deeper look at it.  I landed on Sweepy.  It has a cute little character that talks you through setting up each room in your house, and what items are in each room.  You can set a frequency as to how often you want to clean it, its current state i.e. dirty or clean or somewhere in between.  You can set the effort required to undertake the task from easy, medium, or hard. 

For the premium (paid) version you can set up a daily schedule and it’ll send you reminders of what needs doing that day. This will also allow you to connect to others in your household to share the chores.  You can set task validation for the smallest family members who always like to help (!!!) so you can give them little tasks that they can get on with, then check up on them and give them a virtual award for doing a good job.  Needless to say, I’m not paying for it.

When you click on an element in a room you can select Done, enter the date it was completed, and change any of the settings.   I haven’t actually done any yet.  I have a fundamental dislike of housework.  I actually got my previous management role (head of the hospital cleaners) after I’d said that I have no interest in cleaning, I vacuum when it gets crunchy underfoot and I dust when I can’t see the tv screen. They must have been desperate!  I might do something just to tick it off and see what happens.

It’s just bonkers that there’s an app for just about anything you could think of now.