I am really not much of a homemaker.
When I was still living with my parents, it was an everyday argument between my mom and I to keep my room tidy. Now that I am on my own, I am even more having a hard time tidying up my entire studio-type apartment.
I am working as a full-time journalist, always on call 24/7, and therefore have no sufficient time to clean up. Most of my free time is devoted in doing the laundry, changing the sheets, putting the trash out and other jobs that are within my sight.
Open my cabinet and you’ll think Hurricane Katrina just dropped by. Try to open my kitchen cupboard and you could mistake it for a dumpsite. Dare to open my fridge and you will experience the foulest scent you have ever had the misfortune to smell.
I have always known that there is a lot of rotten stuff in there, but instead of cleaning it all up, which I assume would take me two to three hours, I would simply resort to fast food delivery.
One night, while I was busy writing an article, my mother came in by surprise. She told me that she had visited a friend in a nearby hospital and would be staying for a night.
I was okay with that, until I saw her opening my fridge. To my horror, she slammed the door closed and told me how the humidity induced by the molds in my rotten foods can lead to toxic reactions, ranging from simple flu to cancer.
While reciting her usual litany, she started to remove item by item the stuff inside, and to my surprise, I even had kept those unfinished French fries from McDonalds and two-month old garlic bread inside. True enough, they have molds already and above all, they stink. My entire place smelled like dumpsite.
My mom is often an obsessive-compulsive. If she wants to clean-up something, she’ll do it even if it is already two in the morning. So there she goes, putting some gloves and apron on, opening my windows and turning my electric fan on.
It’s a good thing that I have disinfectant, brushes and other materials ready, since I have been planning to clean-up for weeks now and work would always get in the way.
Mom threw away almost all of the contents of my fridge. She only left the eggs and the catsup. She removed all the railings and other compartment and disinfected it with 10% bleach solution and let it in for ten minutes.
For ten minutes, my mother went on and on lecturing me on water damage and molds. For the first time, I was ashamed when I saw rust in the railings and some hard to remove stains. Signs of water damage, in the form of humidity, are all over my refrigerator.
Being a full-fledged OC, the next thing she did was move my personal refrigerator and inspect the area behind it. She told me that there were signs of moisture at the back of my fridge and that I should call a repair technician first thing tomorrow.
She also looked into my icemaker and saw that the hose connection was already on the verge of breaking apart, and securely taped it (so, that is where the puddle in my kitchen came from). She said that it would only work for the meantime and that I should ask the plumber to install a steel-braided hose.
Before she went back to my rusty railings, she checked my drain pan. It is worse than the stinky drainage nearby. She removed the water and disinfected it too.
Ten minutes later, my mom told me that I should buy a pine-oil cleaner, just to make sure the house was free from germs and bacteria. She was dead tired afterwards and told me that she opened the fridge because she had not eaten anything since noon. Without uttering a word, I dialed the number of my favorite and reliable fast food for delivery.
