My Room Is Finally Clean(ish!)

 After months (yes months!) of delaying, I finally found the courage and tenacity to actually clean up my room. The last time I cleaned it, by the loosest sense of the word clean, was easily 4 months ago.

Junk was everywhere, dust bunnies by the farm loads and dead roaches under the bed. Add to this wonderful jolly mix some coconut husk shredding (I use them as cage bedding for my snakes: they are very very absorptive of malodourous compounds such as snake eject), 2 dried up swordtails (now I know where them lil' buggers went - out of their tanks!), and 3 rainforests of old newspapers, letters and credit card related stuff. And lets not forget the occasional coins and used cotton buds (Ewwww! these look funky after a while!).

I can’t believe I have been living and sleeping in all this filth. Praise be to HIM I didn't acquire any nasty bug from breathing all that pollutants.

First started out cleaning and refreshing the snake tanks (this I do without fail the recommended once a month). This of course entailed extracting my nippy snakes out of their tanks and rooming them temporarily in a separate holding tank or a snake-bag (which is honestly nothing more than a turned-out pillow case). This was a LOT easier when they were like 12 inches long. Now my Boiga is easily pressing 6 feet. All that sinewy muscle is difficult to manage when all they want to do is writhe and grasp your hands and arms. Followed by of course scooping out everything, giving the insides of the tank a nice water & vinegar (or dilute bleach solution) spray down and wiping up to squeaky clean dryness with clean newspapers (good that I have these lying about in the room, eh?). A layer of bedding and a new filled water dish later, them snakes are returned to their clean homes. Yeay! 40 minutes down.

This is my darling Boiga dendrophila dendrophila. Relaxed and Chill.

All 6 feet 2 inches of sleek black and yellow (but not kill-a-fellow type of machismo!).

This is a Red Tail Racer and it isn't happy with me bothering it.

A naturally twitchy species, prone to face-butting intruders into her cage.

Then was the turn of my fishies. 3 separate tanks of assorted decorative fishies - baby koi, orange swordtails, neon tetras and red eye tetras and the requisite cleaner crew of - pleco, albino fox and zebra snail eaters. This was a whole lot more work on account of the wetness involved and carting all said wetness around. Phewh! Next 30 minute down.

Pets done, it was time to attack the entire room with gusto. Summoning and channelling all my rage and energies I threw myself into it like a pack of hungry wolves upon a kill. I:

• Sweep away junk
• Clean & scrub floors
• Mop scrubbed floors (with my new mop head)
• Move furniture around to get to those never-bothered-with-'em areas
• Stash loose things in IKEA paper boxes by categories - Books, DVDs, CDs, Snake magazines and whatever else.
• Re-organise room furniture placement to maximise on fan-wind reach and accommodate 2 new tall multipurpose racks
• Lay out new bamboo mat (bought like oh god, 5 months ago?) to replace my now worn Sarawakian split-rattan mat
• Place new (yes new!) bathmat at the washroom entrance, bedside and fish tank (helps to absorb the occasional spill while maintaining them lil' swimming buggers' tanks)
• Establish new workstation for my laptop for a home office-ish look
• Strategically place and cable-tie Electric power extension cords so I am only like 4 inches from any power point.
• Re-mop the floors (all that fiddling generates dust you see!)
• Lay fresh bedding linens (whoever invented fitted sheets was a Saint I tell you!) to a bounce-a-coin-off tautness
• Mop everything again because I noticed I was walking around in my room with dirty feet!
• Lay down in exhaustion

All this took like 5 long torturous blood & sweat hours, on top of a 30 minute meal break and a Dead Poet's Society showing on Astro (I can't begin to tell you how great and meaningful this show is to me). As I unwind on my perfectly tight bed, I realised I still haven't done my clothes cabinet(s), my sock and innerwear drawers and my collection of detritus known to some as toiletries and preening paraphernalia. Oh god, I so hate cleaning....

Werkstazione! Lappie cooling pad, requisite cheap 2.1 desktop amp set and my woven box of IT knick knacks.

Okay, it isn't as taut as I said it was! Sheesh! And apologies for the kitschy IKEA snake.

Couldn't help it, it was on sale I tell you!

 

My trio of long suffering plants - hydroponic (but still suffering nonetheless) White Peace Lily,

that spiky guy is a Raven's Claw Ferocactus and the other is a specie from the Mammilaria complex (if memory serves me correctly). There used to be a third cactus (a wonderful Notocactus leninghausii) that was happily living on my desktop at work but has since gone to heaven a week after I brought it home.

But I cant deny the satisfaction derived from a nice and clean (and hopefully hygienic) room. Woohoo!