You know how people might come to your house for
Thanksgiving or Christmas, and your mom has you clean every nook and cranny,
and the whole process takes about two days, because you want your relatives to
think you are a clean and organized person, when in reality you actually have
an entire room devoted to junk and don’t vacuum that often? Cleaning Riverside
Lodge is like that, times three.
We have to vacuum under all the beds (who does that every
week?), change the sheets on six beds, clean three bathrooms, vacuum all the
floors, mop, clean the windows, dust everywhere, re-fill everything, count the
DVDs to make sure nobody stole any, and the list goes on. I won’t bore you with
more of it.
Cleaning Riverside Lodge is a lot like cleaning my childhood
home. This is because at least 40% of the items in the lodge used to be at my
old house. My grandma’s clock. The picture my great-grandma painted. The woven coaster
set from 1989. The dining room table I used to eat at every night. The
decorative birdcage and knickknacks my mother used to keep in the living room.
The kitchen is the only place that is foreign to me. It has all brand new
utensils, appliances, and dishes, and most of them are either red or black. I
grew up with macaroni cheese yellow linoleum floors and a bright blue counter top,
so the red and black make me feel like I am in somebody else’s kitchen.
Cleaning up after complete strangers is quite interesting.
As a detective, I like to imagine what kind of people stayed in the rooms. One
time when I was making the bunk beds, I discovered boogers on the blanket. Snot-nosed children, no doubt. On one occasion, the guests left so much
toothpaste in the sink, you’d think a dentist had held a teeth brushing
instructional workshop in there. Another time, I discovered that the last occupants
had the major munchies. On the blankets I found evidence of Life cereal and
Dorito chips. The orange cheese stain on the quilt just about threw my mother
over the edge.
“Tell me, DO YOU eat chips in bed
when you are staying at a stranger’s house?” my mom asked.
“No,” I replied. “But I might if I
was in a hotel. In fact, I am certain I have gotten a chocolate bar melted into
my sheets before. But I would never do that at someone’s house.”
An interesting experience was the time we cleaned up after a
family of Chinese guests. The first thing I discovered was 14 empty shoe boxes
sitting on the front porch. There was
also an empty cardboard case that had claimed to hold two bottles of expensive
sounding champagne. I deduced that the family must have purchased many athletic
shoes at the Nike and Adidas outlets because they had children who were
training for Olympic gold, and then they decided to celebrate a successful
shopping trip in America with a few bottles of the bubbly. Besides the shoe
boxes, I found some packaging with Chinese characters on it. Morgan and I
inspected it as though we could gain a cultural experience from reading the
label of a foreign medicine bottle.
While cleaning the kitchen, I had the most horrifying
experience. I opened the microwave to wipe it out and discovered a bowl of
cold, pink, smelly fish sitting inside. I immediately slammed the door shut and
screamed. It had to have been in there for at least two days. Morgan came to my
rescue. She bravely opened the door and removed the bowl. She inspected it as if trying to figure out
what the sauce recipe was made of. “Don’t just stare at it!” I yelled. The
smell was wafting. “Throw it away!” I held the trash can up to her and she
emptied the bowl into it. While she set out to rinse the bowl and wash it, I
sprayed the microwave with disinfectant and tried not to perish from the toxic odor
that filled my nostrils. Our best guess is that someone had started to make a
meal and just plain forgot about it. Unless it is some sort of Chinese insult,
leaving dead fish in someone’s microwave for them to find days later.
While there is the occasional horrifying experience, there
are some good things about cleaning up after perfect strangers. For example, I
always check the freezer for treats after I’ve finished the job. Two out of
three times, the guests leave ice cream in there. I consider it my tip. Another
time, Morgan and I went grocery shopping in the pantry. The last guests had
stayed for a week, and they left a lot of food behind since they were from
Hawaii and couldn’t take it with them on the plane. I scored two boxes of
cereal, a half-full box of Cheese Nips, those really delicious Mauna Loa chocolate
macadamia treats that people bring you after visiting Hawaii, and a package of
Oreo cookies. They also left soda and wine. I don’t drink soda so I didn’t take
any, but my mother took the wine. You may think I’m taking my chances by consuming
a half-full box of Cheese Nips that strangers left behind, but you need to know
that during the summer I was only earning ¼ my usual income, due to my main job ending. I
took anything that was free.
My mom, Morgan, and I have to get all the cleaning done by
3:45 since check in is at four, but Morgan and I have motivation to get done
earlier so that we can go in the river. I have been washing windows or
scrubbing the barbecue grill or sweeping the deck when I’ve seen kayakers and
rafters go down the river, and it just about kills me. One day in the beginning of August it was
really hot outside and I was washing the windows. I wanted to just sneak down
the hill away from my supervisor and throw myself into the river to cool off. But
then one time Morgan and I enjoyed an exciting ten minute float down the river
and later spent at least an hour fighting our way back up stream, cutting our
feet on the rocks and wandering through the brush like we were on an episode of
Survivor. That’s a whole other story in itself.
Cleaning Riverside Lodge so thoroughly inspired me to go
home and vacuum the cushions on my couch
and do extreme cleaning to the Nth degree, but of course by the time I
got home I was always so wiped that all I did was lounge on my back patio and
sip a cold glass of water. Maybe I’ll clean before Thanksgiving.
