Getting clean

Contrary to popular belief by many Moldovans (with the exception of my host mom), I do not think I will make a good "gospodina' (or housewife) in the future. They seem to think this because I can bake, but what they don't know is I only give them the cookies or brownies when they turn out well. I can't cook even when I try to follow the recipe, the recipe of which I am looking back at every few seconds to make sure I have the right measurements and the right ingredient and the right temperature and I'm doing everything in the right step. It just never turns out right. While I know where everything is (and generally only lose things when someone else has tried to rearrange for me... except for when I misplace things, that's another story), I am not organized. What I like to think is one day when I eventually have my own place I will have enough storage space to put things but I keep ending up in places where I have no storage. The problem really may be that I have too many things, which is possible, but I really am limited on storage space usually (for example, my host mom cleaned out a cabinet of dishes for me to have somewhere to put my clothes). I'm one of those people that does not properly sort my laundry nor do I pay attention to the washing instructions, which has caused me to ruin the same shirt twice (the first time was pure ignorance and once I exchanged the shirt and then tried to wash it again I really did think about it and did not put it in the dryer, but I did use hot water... thus ruining it again. They wouldn't exchange it this time.), shrink my best pair of wool socks, cause a merino wool shirt to fit funny, and turn white clothes gray. And pink. And blue. When spending a summer traveling after studying abroad I thought it would be a brilliant idea to have many white clothes with me. Well, I sweat. A lot. And sweating turns white clothes yellow. My friend's mother in Paris offered to wash my clothes for me and when she gave them back they looked brand new. At that point I discovered bleach. Let me tell you- it's amazing. When I came to Moldova I brought mostly white anklet socks and a couple pairs of white underwear and that's it for the white things but I'd done a really good job of mixing them in with all of my other clothes so they'd become a funny color. It was time to bleach them so I did. However, I did not really know how to use bleach and the instructions were written in Russian so I was screwed. I put some bleach in some water and let them soak overnight. When I then washed them with soap and let them to dry, some had lost their elasticity and others had turned a shade of yellow. Moral of the story: I will not make a good housewife even if I can sometimes bake yummy things.

This bad-housewife fact was reiterated last week when I went to visit Maria. We'd had a little bit of a drizzle over the night and so it was kind of muddy, but I just had to see my new doorbell friend Dasa. She has decided she likes to crawl on my lap now which is fine when I wear jeans because, well, the dirt hides well. It does not, however, hide well on light gray dress pants. Needless to say I had little paw prints all over my thighs. When I arrived at Maria's house I told her as soon as I entered I needed a damp cloth to clean my pants because there is no way I could go to school with (obviously) dirty pants. She insisted I use a dry cloth which I obliged to even though I didn't think it would work. It worked like MAGIC- magic I tell you! Today I decided to try it again because the dusting of snow from last night made little Dasa's paws muddy again, and again, using a dry towel on dirt cleans up clothes just nicely.

Cleaning tips of the day: read instructions. sort clothes. less is more. use a dry cloth to get mudd off of clothes.