It just takes a little creativity

The workers have been hammering and cutting and plastering for the past six weeks. They are working on a new addition for Elizabeth and John, who live downstairs. They added five feet to my back deck and new ballisters to both front and back decks. The problem is that I haven’t had water in my kitchen for the last four weeks, which includes both my sink and my semi-automatic washing machine.

And the dust . . . well, it’s everywhere. I was trying to hold out until they were finished before I clean, but today I woke up and couldn’t help myself. It was time to get things in order. It’s been two weeks since I last mopped the floor and two weeks here is an awfully long time.

I cleaned the bathrooms. Then I filled my kettle in the bathroom with water. I heated the water, dumped it into a dishpan and soaped up my dirty dishes – and then rinsed them in the shower. I dusted and polished and tidied up and then it was time to get creative.

I heated another kettle of water fetched from the bathroom sink, found a sauce pan and a cleaning bucket, scouring pad, storage container, two 5-liter bottles, grabbed the bleach and the laundry soap, sorted the dirty clothes, and drug the hamper behind me and headed for my bathroom shower.

I stepped into my cold shower and mixed some of the kettle water with cold water dripping from the shower head. I carefully poured small portions into the small disposable storage container. I used it to wash my hair and rinse it with creme rinse. My hair is so brittle, broken and long that I’m hoping that warm water makes a difference.

Once my hair was clean, I put laundry soap in the bucket and washed my dark clothes, squeezing and soaking them to rinse the suds before tossing them into the empty hamper. I emptied the water and added fresh water and more laundry soap and some bleach. This time going through the same process for my whites – only using some of the hot water in this process. Finally, I fill up the two 5-liter bottles with water that I will lug back into the kitchen to use for small cleaning projects this week.

Now that I’m done with me, my hair, my laundry, and filling empty containers with water, the shower needs to be cleaned. I have a bucket of soapy water with bleach – ah, perfect for cleaning the tiles – and that’s when the scouring pad comes in handy.

I wash the bucket so that it sparkles and is ready for the next time I need to multi-task. The perfect process - within a forty minute period, I'm clean, my hair is clean, my shower is clean, my laundry is done, spare water containers are filled and my cleaning supplies sparkle with readiness for their next use. Now all I have to do is get the extension cord and hook up the semi-automatic washing machine so I can use the spin cycle before hanging my clothes out to dry. And, who says Peace Corps can be challenging?