LiveJournal Entry: The Fifth
I forgot how nice cold water + hot weather can be!
So, I was outside in my driveway shampooing a Syrian rug this weekend (ya know, like you do).
A little background: My basement had a flood earlier this year. As in 6" of standing water. Most of what I own is in plastic bins, since my last basement also had a tendency to flood, but a lot of my files and books had not made it upstairs to their intended places in my apartment, and so their cardboard boxes were not spared from the flood. After the initial triage and anti-mildew efforts, I discovered a few hidden things that should really have been dealt with sooner: one of which was a wool rug my father brought back form Syria for me a few years ago.
So, after weaving a tapestry of obscenity, I let said rug soak in a mild solution of hot water and anti-mildew/bacterial cleaner. I'm sure there are people cringing at that sentence (wool rug with natural dyes, probably not completely fixed) but keep in mind that it had already been wet for weeks at this point and who knows what was evolving inside of it.
Anyway, I let said rug soak for a week (and let me tell you, it really did smell like wet sheep. Fascinating). Then I did what the Turkish rug merchant in Turkey suggested as the best way to clean natural wool rugs: Natural wool is animal hair, and one of the easiest and effective ways to wash animal hair? Shampoo. People shampoo.
So, investing in a couple of bottles of the simplest no-frills shampoo I could find (Sauve), I took the sheepy-smelling rug out to the driveway, laid it out flat, and proceded to wet it down and gently brush shampoo onto it with a long soft bristled broom.
I already knew what the rug smelled like, and since it's big enough to require me to walk around on it to effectively get to all of it, I was wandering around in my bare feet and shorts for this cleaning process. It was a hot day, and so this was not all that uncomfortable.
But I reiterate that it was a hot day, and sunny. I was sweating like crazy. My feet felt great, but my head was still overheating (I've never been a very efficient thinker). But suddenly light dawned or Marblehead and I bent over and soaked the back of my head with the hose I had in my hand. The spray head was set to the "shower" setting to avoid blasting the rug too forcefully, and thus saturady my superdome quite effectively.
The sensation brought back a hundred memories of when I was a kid; I could smell wet grass, I could feel tiny little sprinkler jets against the bottoms of my feet. It all came back so suddenly and with such clarity that, along with the temperature gradient shock of cold water + hot skin, I was taken away for a moment in my own personal Calgon experience.
I stood back up and cold streams of water ran into my t-shirt and down my back. Awesome. Holy crap, no wonder kids are always so happy running around like maniacs when there's a sprinkler around.
Like any engineer/scientist worth their salt I was curious if, when repeated, the same effect occurred, so I doused my head again. No really, that's why I did it. Really. And it was.
So, the arduous task of shampooing and lugging around the processed hair of a Syrian sheep (or perhaps goat) was made much more pleasant by this simple action. It's interesting to note that, were I to recount this story to any pre-teen worth their salt, I would undoubtedly receive a "Duh!"
Anyway, next chance I get I'm doing it again. Rug or no rug. And just taking a cold shower doesn't count. No, there's something altogether different about water that comes from a garden hose. I used to know that much more instinctively.
I think my little neice will be old enough to play in the sprinklers at the end of the summer, next summer for sure. I can't wait, it's gonna be a blast.
So, I was outside in my driveway shampooing a Syrian rug this weekend (ya know, like you do).
A little background: My basement had a flood earlier this year. As in 6" of standing water. Most of what I own is in plastic bins, since my last basement also had a tendency to flood, but a lot of my files and books had not made it upstairs to their intended places in my apartment, and so their cardboard boxes were not spared from the flood. After the initial triage and anti-mildew efforts, I discovered a few hidden things that should really have been dealt with sooner: one of which was a wool rug my father brought back form Syria for me a few years ago.
So, after weaving a tapestry of obscenity, I let said rug soak in a mild solution of hot water and anti-mildew/bacterial cleaner. I'm sure there are people cringing at that sentence (wool rug with natural dyes, probably not completely fixed) but keep in mind that it had already been wet for weeks at this point and who knows what was evolving inside of it.
Anyway, I let said rug soak for a week (and let me tell you, it really did smell like wet sheep. Fascinating). Then I did what the Turkish rug merchant in Turkey suggested as the best way to clean natural wool rugs: Natural wool is animal hair, and one of the easiest and effective ways to wash animal hair? Shampoo. People shampoo.
So, investing in a couple of bottles of the simplest no-frills shampoo I could find (Sauve), I took the sheepy-smelling rug out to the driveway, laid it out flat, and proceded to wet it down and gently brush shampoo onto it with a long soft bristled broom.
I already knew what the rug smelled like, and since it's big enough to require me to walk around on it to effectively get to all of it, I was wandering around in my bare feet and shorts for this cleaning process. It was a hot day, and so this was not all that uncomfortable.
But I reiterate that it was a hot day, and sunny. I was sweating like crazy. My feet felt great, but my head was still overheating (I've never been a very efficient thinker). But suddenly light dawned or Marblehead and I bent over and soaked the back of my head with the hose I had in my hand. The spray head was set to the "shower" setting to avoid blasting the rug too forcefully, and thus saturady my superdome quite effectively.
The sensation brought back a hundred memories of when I was a kid; I could smell wet grass, I could feel tiny little sprinkler jets against the bottoms of my feet. It all came back so suddenly and with such clarity that, along with the temperature gradient shock of cold water + hot skin, I was taken away for a moment in my own personal Calgon experience.
I stood back up and cold streams of water ran into my t-shirt and down my back. Awesome. Holy crap, no wonder kids are always so happy running around like maniacs when there's a sprinkler around.
Like any engineer/scientist worth their salt I was curious if, when repeated, the same effect occurred, so I doused my head again. No really, that's why I did it. Really. And it was.
So, the arduous task of shampooing and lugging around the processed hair of a Syrian sheep (or perhaps goat) was made much more pleasant by this simple action. It's interesting to note that, were I to recount this story to any pre-teen worth their salt, I would undoubtedly receive a "Duh!"
Anyway, next chance I get I'm doing it again. Rug or no rug. And just taking a cold shower doesn't count. No, there's something altogether different about water that comes from a garden hose. I used to know that much more instinctively.
I think my little neice will be old enough to play in the sprinklers at the end of the summer, next summer for sure. I can't wait, it's gonna be a blast.