Lockdown Chronicles Part 1

Math was my all time favourite subject growing up. Agreed I may not be doing anything beyond elementary level problems now, but somehow the laundry and dust math during this quarantine doesn’t seem to add up. We never leave the house, the windows are almost always sealed shut (owing to my severe lizard phobia) and our days basically see us lounging around in our PJs.

All my misadventures with housework during this quarantine have only made me wish I had my own version of Irona. For those in the dance monkey generation, Irona was a robot butler on Richie Rich… so basically imagine if Siri and your iVac had a baby who was on steroids – that’s Irona. 

Quarantine Dust Diaries

With my lil E being the sensory seeker he is, the apartment is invariably swept thrice daily (at least). And yet every morning magically brings with it a full load of fresh dust that seems to sneak into the every cranny of the place. The entire apartment is but as little as a cat’s forehead, but we seem to gather a mini desert of sand particles every single day. (The thought crosses my mind every single day I clean.)

And of course let’s not forget the Bermuda triangle in our living room disguised as a couch. It is the master of David Blaining toys, magnets, the remote and crumbs from cookies and Pringles. Apart from these mysterious attraction properties that the couch possesses, it seems to spew out a generous interest for the items deposited in the form of more dust. (Face palm)… make that double face palm.

Laundry Locked and Always Loaded

If you know me, you know that Math is my favourite subject. To know more about me, read this. We do laundry at my house on a daily basis on regular days (read good old non quarantine days). I mean it makes sense when you go to work or to school; you are bound to have some dirty paint filled clothes that need to go into the wash. But somehow, the people:laundry ratio in this household during the lockdown is a complete mystery. My laundry basket is my akshaya pathram with a puzzling ability to keep refilling itself just when you think you’ve reached the bottom. 

Let’s not forget the Kilimanjaro of washed, yet-to-be-folded clothes that occupy the other basket, which has slowly metamorphosed into the camel in the tent and taken up the whole guest bed (both metaphorically and by exact looks too… the camel’s hump gets bigger as Lockdown 1.0, 2.0, etc. keep getting announced). 

Quarantine, Clean, Rinse & Repeat

I always try and stay in the moment and for the most part it works too. But looking ahead at the major toy sorting and clean up post quarantine gives me the heebie jeebies. I may be just penning my random flow of thoughts like I usually do, coz as you know, this is definitely cheaper than therapy, but imagining the road post lockdown, gives me palpitations.

My 6 years old, the genius that he is loves his puzzles and if you visit my home at any given time (virtually even), you will find a minimum of six to eight puzzles in different stages of completion. The flip side is that this also means that there are n number of puzzles to be sorted and stored.

Apart from this, my sonny boy is a sensory seeker and he loves water. Add two and two and my dining area is basically his own personal slip-n-slide everyday. Phew. The poor chap was stuck indoors all summer, I can’t blame him one bit. But this magnanimous feeling of ‘aw what can he do?’ quickly fades when I clean the water up for the fourth or fifth time for the day. The plus side is every night I have no toys to clean up I guess. Just need to set his Montessori corner and clean up some extra puddles of water and then I get to do some of my own work. This also does mean that come morning, the whole day is going to replay like the Groundhog Day and there’s nothing I can do about it. Surrender I say… Surrender!

Introducing Zen Lockdown Cleaning

You do something everyday and it can easily become a routine. That’s the whole premise of habit forming right? So what started happening was a slight shift in my mindset. I mean I’m no Zen master, but somehow cleaning the house or doing the dishes is not much of a daunting task running on day 77 of the lockdown. So what has changed?

When I start swabbing the floor or tackling the dirty sink full of dishes, I look at it as one tile or one plate at a time. My goal for the moment would be to get that tile perfectly clean or that dish sparkling. It’s never about the whole room or the whole house or the entire mountain of dishes; it’s just about that one right in front of me. Pretty zen right? About completely living in the now. This simple change in my mindset, really made a world of a difference.

How have you been handling the whole COVID 19 quarantine at home? Please tell me I’m not the only one who lives with an in-house tsunami. Ease my mind and leave your comments. The lockdown Gods will smile upon you!