There is Swiss clean and there is Australian clean ... and Australians needs to clean up their act if they want to lead the world. Australians are really good at surface cleaning so things look good from a normal distance. When the Swiss do cleaning well, it's the stuff you can't see that is clean too ... even from close up and personal.
Urban myth it may be, but the story goes that when your landlord does the inspection of your apartment when you leave in Switzerland, the usual thing is to run a finger over the hidden surfaces e.g. tops of doors, door handles, cupboards etc and those need to pass muster too. Which is why it pays to get a licensed cleaner in to do a guaranteed job. Costs around CHF 1,200-CHF 1,500 but the cleaners have to come back and redo it until the landlord is satisfied. The system works ... as long as you can afford it (but that goes for just about anything today).
Our apartment in Australia was described as "professionally cleaned" including the carpet. Our vacuum cleaner which had been washed to within an inch of its life before leaving Switzerland to pass Australian Quarantine inspection, clogged literally within minutes of starting up. Admittedly there had been moving-in traffic across the carpet but the subsequent vacuum filter cleaning has made me even more certain than ever that I want to live on wooden floors in the longer term. Perhaps it's just that tufted carpets should be condemned as suckers up of dust - we have always lived previously with loop pile carpets.
Meanwhile I have run my fingers over many surfaces ... and the kitchen surfaces plus under the top of the ovens and concealed lighting in particular are sticky to the touch and some will never be clean I suspect because of years of neglect. My sister in law is a fan of sugar soap which I had not really paid attention to previously and now I will investigate. (By the way, there is no excuse for leaving old-fashioned metal plate stoves looking rusty and all done for. There is polish which makes them come up looking like new and just makes such a good impression not to mention protecting the metal.)
Of course, air pollution is one of the great enemies of clean. Australia has always seemed to me to have pretty clean air by most standards but moving into a city apartment has made me realise just how sullying pollution is. Air vents of airconditioners and openings (doors and windows) in North Sydney are in our experience (three different apartments) very grimy if you look beneath the surface and yet we live with them because most of us are not in the habit of close inspection. By the way, cotton buds are useful for cleaning air and airconditioner vent covers.
Today I am going to tackle the front door around the frame - I tried removing the black sticky fluff with a damp cloth and just made it worse. I hate to think of what's going into our lungs.
But I've been pondering an anomaly. In any country, typically the people we get to do the bulk of our cleaning are people from other less advantaged societies. And often immigrants who are language disadvantaged and culturally not right up to the mark with expectations. So their concept of clean may well be based on the concept of clean that is possible in a very different environment from those they are attempting to clean.
Some years back Australia "cleaned up" the black market economy and I am not sure whether it operates in Switzerland or not. But it's not just a tax collection issue. It's about providing proper training and for additional assurance, some kind of licensing. I must investigate whether there are any training schools for domestic cleaners in Australia and whether they issue a certificate of proficiency. Perhaps this could be a new potential business venture for me. ;-)
Urban myth it may be, but the story goes that when your landlord does the inspection of your apartment when you leave in Switzerland, the usual thing is to run a finger over the hidden surfaces e.g. tops of doors, door handles, cupboards etc and those need to pass muster too. Which is why it pays to get a licensed cleaner in to do a guaranteed job. Costs around CHF 1,200-CHF 1,500 but the cleaners have to come back and redo it until the landlord is satisfied. The system works ... as long as you can afford it (but that goes for just about anything today).
Our apartment in Australia was described as "professionally cleaned" including the carpet. Our vacuum cleaner which had been washed to within an inch of its life before leaving Switzerland to pass Australian Quarantine inspection, clogged literally within minutes of starting up. Admittedly there had been moving-in traffic across the carpet but the subsequent vacuum filter cleaning has made me even more certain than ever that I want to live on wooden floors in the longer term. Perhaps it's just that tufted carpets should be condemned as suckers up of dust - we have always lived previously with loop pile carpets.
Meanwhile I have run my fingers over many surfaces ... and the kitchen surfaces plus under the top of the ovens and concealed lighting in particular are sticky to the touch and some will never be clean I suspect because of years of neglect. My sister in law is a fan of sugar soap which I had not really paid attention to previously and now I will investigate. (By the way, there is no excuse for leaving old-fashioned metal plate stoves looking rusty and all done for. There is polish which makes them come up looking like new and just makes such a good impression not to mention protecting the metal.)
Of course, air pollution is one of the great enemies of clean. Australia has always seemed to me to have pretty clean air by most standards but moving into a city apartment has made me realise just how sullying pollution is. Air vents of airconditioners and openings (doors and windows) in North Sydney are in our experience (three different apartments) very grimy if you look beneath the surface and yet we live with them because most of us are not in the habit of close inspection. By the way, cotton buds are useful for cleaning air and airconditioner vent covers.
Today I am going to tackle the front door around the frame - I tried removing the black sticky fluff with a damp cloth and just made it worse. I hate to think of what's going into our lungs.
But I've been pondering an anomaly. In any country, typically the people we get to do the bulk of our cleaning are people from other less advantaged societies. And often immigrants who are language disadvantaged and culturally not right up to the mark with expectations. So their concept of clean may well be based on the concept of clean that is possible in a very different environment from those they are attempting to clean.
Some years back Australia "cleaned up" the black market economy and I am not sure whether it operates in Switzerland or not. But it's not just a tax collection issue. It's about providing proper training and for additional assurance, some kind of licensing. I must investigate whether there are any training schools for domestic cleaners in Australia and whether they issue a certificate of proficiency. Perhaps this could be a new potential business venture for me. ;-)
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