No Ayi, No Cry: Relearning the Art of Cleaning Up After Yourself

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I want to start this off by first saying that I love and respect my husband. He’s a sexy sweetheart and a genuinely good man. That said, if he were to left alone without an ayi, he would be eating instant noodles and living in a pile of dirty laundry. I love him, but he has no idea how to clean, to the point where he once asked “Honey, do we own a vacuum?”, then walked out of the room in silence after seeing the genuinely shocked expression on my face.

If the coronavirus continues to spread and more roads become closed, our beloved ayi might not come back to us immediately after the CNY holiday. For those who are thinking ahead and planning for the worst, it’s time to face the fact that, maybe, we’ll have to clean our own apartments for a while.

General Cleaning

Xiaomi makes a pretty decent vacuum robot that’s essentially identical to the Roombot. You can let it roam around and clean on its own which can save you a lot of time and effort. If you have a duplex or are really into details, then you’re not going to love this 100 percent. It’ll do enough to get most of the job done.

For those who want to disinfect their floors (especially their entryways), I recommend those mops with the spray bottle on the handle. I mix about 1/4 disinfectant and 3/4 water when I use it so that not only do I clean up the floor, I also disinfect it. There are also those mops that have those big yellow foam bars on the bottom. While they’re easier to find and cheaper, I don’t recommend them because of the amount of bacteria they trap after cleaning. You can’t remove the foam to clean after each use the way you can with a cloth mop.

For trash bags, we recently found biodegradable options on Taobao that are basically the same price as plastic ones.

The Bedroom

My doctor opened my eyes to the fact that mattresses get heavier the longer they’re used. We shed dead skin all day, every day. We spend a large amount of our time in bed and that tends to be the place that collects a gross amount of dead skin, which, paired with the warm temperature that we like to sleep in, turns it into an ideal home for bed bugs. It doesn’t hurt to go clean your mattress with a bed bug vacuum every once in a while just to keep it nice and clean.

The Kitchen

It’s not a bad idea to invest in multiple cutting boards: one for fruits and vegetables, one for fish, one for meat, and one for cooked items. They sell color-coded packs at Ikea and on Taobao so upping your food hygiene practices is super easy.

Laundry

A trusted brand for disinfectant is Dettol. Mix a bit of it in with your detergent when you do a load to help kill the bacteria trapped on clothing.

The Bathroom

No one likes to clean the bathroom but it still needs to be done. Disinfect and clean the bowl on a regular basis. And remember, toilet brushes aren’t meant to last forever. Replace them when they start grossing you out. 

Photos: taobao, Unsplash, giphy

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