By Adar
As strange as it may seem, basic cleaning customs are not always intuitive. I'm used to my swiffer, thanks very much. But in our apartment we have a cleaning rotation, and last night was my first time cleaning the floor. This involves several processes and quite a few tools. First is sweeping with a normal broom. Then, you fill up a bucket with soapy water and attach a large piece of felt-ish cloth to the end of a squeegie-ish thing that also looks like a quasi-broom. Then you pour the water on the floor and start mopping it up. Where does it go? Downstairs, you open the front door and sweep the water outside. Upstairs, each unit has a drain somewhere that you guide the dirty water to. When I cleaned my room this way, I had not yet learned the mop-cloth-attachment deal so I was just sweeping water into the drain in my bathroom. It took about sixteen hours to completely drain. And some of these drains are hidden in closets down the hall, which I find a little weird. But these drains are all over the place, and you can even buy little replacement covers that are decorated and pretty.
Next you replace the first cloth with a dry one and dry up the floor. Unfortunately, one of our roommates had thrown out the other cloth, so we were slipping around for a little bit. This water-squeegie-kind of mopping process is done in every kind of setting. I'm just trying to imagine spilling water all over my wooden floor in Fulbright hall on the fifth, sixth, seventh floors. While I was cleaning the floor, I was being guided by Iris, one of my Israeli roommates, who was laughing at me the whole time. She just could not understand how I didn't grow up cleaning floors like this. I think she thinks I might just never clean (not true). Or that American floors just never get dirty (also not true).