Cleaning

This Wednesday, the movers will come. On Thursday, they will load our stuff into a container, and put the container on a truck. The truck will drive to a boat, and the container will be loaded on the boat, and then it will float around the ocean for a month or so, before turning up at customs and quarantine.

In order to get through customs and quarantine quickly, with as little extra expense as possible, we were told, we need to make sure all our things are thoroughly cleaned. Thoroughly.

Camping gear? Make sure there is no dirt on it. Clean with soap to get it off.

Bicycle? No grease on the chain at all.

Anything that has been outside? Clean clean super clean.

I have been cleaning.

Jonathan and I scrubbed the bottom of the tent with sponges loaded with dish soap and water. I wiped down the rest of it.

Today I took some solvent and a couple of toothbrushes and attacked the bicycle chain. Three and a half hours later, it looked great. No more dirt and grime! Later, I went to drip some lube on it to protect the spotless chain from the elements while in transit. Turns out that nothing is better than bike chain lube for pulling dirt out of nowhere and plastering it all over the bike chain again. I had to spend another two hours cleaning the chain again after I thought I was finished. Stupid bike. Stupid chain. Stupid cleaning.

Oh, and when the bottom of the tent dried? It still looked like there was dirt on it. Dirt that is invisible when wet, and impervious to dish soap and water and scrubbing.

And when I went to clean the sporting equipment that's been outside? The tennis racket is so old that its handle disintegrated in the soapy water.

I quit.

Let's leave all this stuff here.

Except the bike, because I spent five hours cleaning it today and I'm not losing that time.

Only I'm a little worried that tomorrow morning it will be magically coated with grime all over again. How does it do that?