The 3 Cleaning Jobs We Most Dread

Let’s face it, some things are substantially more difficult to clean than others.

16:43 28 October 2019

Owing to the difficulties involved in cleaning them we tend to put off those jobs until they are in such a state that they can’t help but to be noticed. Then they have to be done.

Jobs we Dread Number 1: Outdoor Windows

This one is something you just give in and pay someone to do. It requires so much preparation and tools that it’s only a job someone with lots of time and tendrils of obsessive compulsive disorder can enjoy.

First there is the ladder and access. Usually windows are situated above hedges, or a pile of things you are saving for a job you will do later, or something even worse. Overcoming in-accessibility is the first step.

 

There is finding a safe spot to climb and affix the ladder, and the intricate removal of fly screens to get to the window itself. Clearing away any insects and wasps nests and still needing octopus arms to wipe evenly over every surface, with sprays and cleaning cloths. Rarely conducive to a smooth clean finish anyway. Just when you think you’ve done a great job, that has taken you almost an hour, you replace the flyscreens to find that your efforts have made a minimum of difference. And you’ve only finished one! There are eight more to do. Maybe it’s better to save them for the next weekend.

Jobs we Dread Number 2: Barbeque cleaning

If you, like most Kiwis, enjoy a summer of barbeques with friends, then the initial barbeque clean after being left for months through winter cold, when the indoor parties of the other seasons subside, becomes an absolute shocker. Zipping off the cover, meat carefully laid for cooking beside it. Running up to the hardware or service station for the new gas bottle,  somehow in those months all its contents leached out, they always seem to be empty when you check them.

 

Taking off the lid to find a dirty, oily, rusty gloop of a hotplate staring at you which you would not see fit to cook on, even if someone was paying you. Taking out the barbeque tool to scrape at it, dig at it, lift areas of it away, and barely, despite the force you are using, does it make a lick of difference. You try some botchy multi purpose sprays that also make hardly a dint in the surface until finally you spray it thick with oven cleaner or the best bbq cleaner you can find. Put the lid back on and go inside to cook on the stove in the largest fry pan you can find. You’ll finish that huge job, next weekend.

 

Jobs we Dread Number 3: Roof Cleaning

Seems easy enough at first glance, just get a ladder, get up there and hose away as much debris from the gutters and the moulds on the roof that have now started leaking through to contaminate the ceilings.

 

In truth, it’s always a bigger job. Sometimes those gutters are clogged full, you spend time scooping out the compressed sludge of leaves and waste that have built up there first. Then the spores that you were just going to hose off expand at the touch of water. Several of the products you try don’t work very well either. You are forced to buy expensive cleaners that you must leave for hours until they can kill all the mould, mildew and discoloration on the roof. Then you discover cracks in the tiles and broken areas where the rain is getting in, The bolts that hold your tin or colorbond roof down are rusting and that’s a whole separate job that must be done.   

On another weekend when you have more time. It’s an endless and thankless job.