Mop Technology and Cleaning Ladies

I never once saw my mother, my African nanny nor our gorgeous Czechoslovakian cleaning lady Angela throw a bucket of water on the kitchen floor and mop it by attaching a shmatta to a stick. The first time I saw this extraordinarily primitive cleaning technique was on a visit to a friend in Mullumbimby where his new Moroccan Israeli girlfriend was cleaning his house perhaps for the first time ever. Since then I have only ever seen the bucket-shmatta-stick method used by Israeli’s or their partners. It completely fascinates me. In this day and age when we can practically call home from our mobiles on Mars, how is it that Israeli woman are still mopping the floor with a shmatta and a stick?

For most of my adult life the cleaning lady in my house was me. Perhaps it had to do with a certain uncomfortable feeling I had from having grown up in South Africa, or perhaps it was because I married a man sorely lacking in an MBA, but by the time our fifth baby came along, I was ready for some help and so I enlisted the services of an Israeli. It didn’t take me long to discover that young Israeli girls are rarely skilled in the art of cleaning house and besides, I could never tell them what to do because I was too busy making them tea and mopping the floor to ask them to hang out the washing. “Never mind, you hold the baby, I’ll do the washing” I would say shocked by my own inability to delegate to someone half my age wearing gold platform shoes.

Eventually I responded to a flyer in my mailbox. A gentle trustworthy reliable husband and wife team from Korea, who would bring their own equipment, speak very little English, clearly define the job they intended to complete and stay no more than an hour and a half. It was perfect. No tea, no counselling and no waiting for them to finish. For five years I lived without fear, and then we made Aliya.

A few weeks after arriving in Israel, our agent called to tell us the cleaning lady would be arriving at 8am. It would give us an excuse to get the kids to school on time (for once) and do some shopping for Shabbat. By one pm, we thought it safe to return home, only to be swished out the front door by a wave of water and a well dressed cleaning lady waving a shamatta and a stick yelling at us in a most officious Hebrew.

Since then, Lubner and I have bonded. She arrives whenever she wants and tells me how long she will take to finish. She leaves a tower of Babel pile of linen for me to wash, and a list of chores for me to complete before she returns - whenever that may be. She speaks to me in a a language I will probably never understand and she locks up the safe room with a promise that if anything ever happens, she will rush over from the adjoining village to attend to my families safety.

Last week I woke the entire household at six am, to get ready for Lubnar the cleaning lady. We tidied, we washed, we stacked, we sorted, we packed and we tucked away but Lubner never came. So out came the bucket and the shmatta and the stick. I filled the bucket with soapy water, swished it over the tiled floor and began to mop in disbelief. This is the twenty first century, we talk with and see family and friends online over a distance of 14136 kilometers in real time and I am mopping the kitchen floor with a shmatta and a stick. In those moments, I invented an automatic swirly machine that silently polishes the floor much like a swimming pool cleaner randomly moving around the house sucking up dust and polishing. I invented Ugg-pads, wide soft self soaping removable sponges that you attach to your teenagers feet when they are still asleep and as they mooch around all morning (without lifting their feet), unbeknown to them they are also miraculously cleaning the floor.

Then the five year old took over and completed the task with Cinderella enthusiasm while I wiped down the bathroom mirror, splashed some tea tree oil around the loo, sent hubby outside to shake out the rugs and cleaned the kitchen. The older kids hung out the washing and the seven year old entertained us playing ‘Let it Be’ on the out of tune piano. The house was incomparably filthier than it had been the week before, but a little leavened bread tucked behind the couch will only serve at a mitzvah in the year to come. As for Lubner, I believe she will be back, one random Friday morning 8am, sharp, I just hope I can extract the shmatta off the wheels of the remote control car before she takes out her stick and reminds me that in Israel, some things will never change.