Dorm room maintenance
Most of us start our housekeeping duties in a hostel room. At least, many people I know of did. Unlike in the Western countries Indian kids don’t usually encounter house maintenance earlier, as most Indian homes are maintained by house helps/bhais. In places where the house help is not used, invariably the mother cleans up regularly. This throws up an interesting situation when these kids go off to their first home away from home. It is important that one learns/does good home maintenance in hostels because it sets the tone for what is to follow in the later years.
I have known people to keep immaculate rooms (cleaner than churches, believe me) and some others that were not even fit for human habitation. Interestingly, these rooms were often side by side… 
Things are even more difficult when there is double occupancy in a room as the cleaning duties undergo perennial postponement in a silent game of one upmanship. Both parties would be saying silently, I cleaned up last time.. now it’s your turn. Of course neither realise that the other person is thinking the same thing.
And if you misfortunate enough to get a roommate who works out a lot but is just that bit slow in his laundry duties, you’ve had it…
It is best if one does a minor cleanup every week. In several hostels, the work can be outsourced to the local helps. But where this luxury is not available, real discipline is required to maintain a good hostel room.
Alternately, a thorough wash once a month does good too. Quite a few of my friends used to do this. Get all the furniture out of the room (including the beds) and throw water everywhere before moving stuff back in. This can be done in as little as an hour once you get used to it. One of the side benefits is that you never accumulate junk in your room when you do this.
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Nice one, if I were to stay in a hostel and if I were to have a room-mate, would have preferred someone like you.
In Western countries, quite a lot of health problems arise because of lack of cleaniness in accommodations mainly because,
a. Carpets are not vacuumed and steam-cleaned periodically.
b. Popcorn, chips, salt and feet on sofas (couch potatoes watching TVs lying on the sofas)..
c. Venetian blinds accummulating a lot of dust
d. Bath-tubs and tiles not cleaned properly in bathrooms.
e. AC filters not cleaned regularly.
f. Not changing bed & sofa-linen periodically.
Lot of them, hide all this with a heavy dose of Potpourri on the carpet, and do a simple vacuum clean to hide the germs and odour.
The ultimate test to evaluate cleaniness of the accommodation is to lean back on the sofa and see if your body itches or not.
Having raised with emphasis on hygiene/cleaniness, am glad to find a pal in you.
Hi Sudarsan, nice informative comment.
Couple of queries..
1. What is steam cleaning.. not sure I am familiar with the process..
2. Also, ‘potpourri on the carpet’ is a phrase I am having trouble understanding. Is it a deodoriser…
Hi Sudarsan, nice informative comment.
Couple of queries..
1. What is steam cleaning.. not sure I am familiar with the process..
2. Also, ‘potpourri on the carpet’ is a phrase I am having trouble understanding. Is it a deodoriser…
For cleaning carpets, vacuum cleaners come with an extra nozzle for pumping steam and has a compartment for filling water (like a steam iron). Steam removes grease, solidified particles clinging to the carpet (imagine rice/tomato-sauce etc drying on carpet, there is no way vacuum will pull that off). Steam cleaning should be good for hard floors too (wooden, marble, granite, ceramic tiles etc), and the steam vacuum cleaners abroad work on hard-floors by defaults (since kitchen floors are normally linoleum/vinyl/ceramic floors there).
Potpourri is a bag of dried aromatic flowers. The natural one has very mild fragrance. The commercial one has a heavy dose of deodoriser and colouring, and may/may not contain flowers.
Lets say I give you 5ml of Agarbatthi fragrance and ask you to spread it out on your floor. For hard-floors, its easy to dilute with some water and mop-it over. For carpets, they use these scented bits of flowers or coloured-straw-bits and throw it across the carpet and vacuum it out.
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