Cleanliness Matters -- Find a Way!

 

When we first walked into the Elders' Taitung apartment, we were a little dismayed that all the windows looked like this. We figured someone did it to prepare for a typhoon, but it made the apartment feel dingy and really unpleasant. We asked multiple people whether the tape needed to stay that way and they all just looked at us puzzled, so we decided to take it off. Pulling off the yellow part was easy, but most of the tape got left behind as gunk on the window. (I think the tape must have been there for a year or more).

We tried to find a razor blade scraper at department stores, but with no luck. One store suggested a nearby building supply company, and they had a relatively expensive scraper, but I had to have it.

To clean all the windows took many hours, but it was worth it. The apartment is now very pleasant and has wonderful views and is bright and cheery!

There was an even more challenging cleaning problem in the apartment though. Unfortunately, this before picture doesn't really show the whole situation. The floor in the laundry area had baked on dirt. After using a mop, hot soapy water, and a bristle brush, it still looked like this.

In the end, I spent hours, over multiple days, scrubbing each square on the floor with .... steel wool! But it worked. It is now a much nicer place to do laundry! There was an unfortunate side effect. The steel wool kind of disappeared with all the scrubbing, and it wasn't until later that I realized there were lots of little metal pieces embedded in the mop that would then come loose when mopping, spreading little metal pieces all over the apartment. We had to get a new mop head.

It is hard to describe how satisfying it was to get these areas clean and feel the difference it made in the apartment and in our attitude. We were also able to clean the hard water off of the shower.

All of this cleaning took time and persistence over quite a few days, but it was worth it! The Lord told Joseph Smith, "Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God;" (Doctrine and Covenants 88:119). The Lord was speaking specifically about building sacred temples, but we are also taught that our homes should be comparable to the temple in sacredness. Being clean is part of being a house of order, learning, glory and a house of God, and it often takes quite a bit of effort!