Carpet Cleaning

I spent last Sunday helping my family clean, or should I say I spent the day WATCHING them clean. Let me tell you- my host family members are professional cleaners- NO JOKE, and I thought I should share this with all of you!

The houses are made of concrete with cement or tile floors in Albania, but every house I’ve been to is also full of gigantic rugs. Naturally, while cleaning my bedroom I swept with a broom, mopped, and called it “clean.” My host mother on the other hand, insisted on removing the gigantic area rug to clean. Instead of arguing with her, I let them roll of the rug and shake it over the balcony. Again, thinking it was “clean,” I started rolling up the rug to take back to my room. They kept yelling “no” and then proceeded to get down on their knees and sweep the rug with a wide array of tiny brooms. The broom series is comparable to how you would use sand paper- start with the large grains and progress to finer sand paper step by step. The last broom in the set looked like a tiny scrub brush, and you would NOT BELIEVE the amount of dirt that came out of that rug after one month. They also managed to pick up a lot of my hair, which then made them concerned that I was losing too much hair and I was sick. I convinced them I was okay and we eventually put the ACTUALLY clean rug back into my room. All I have to say is that I am very thankful for vacuums, and I am still impressed with how good they are at cleaning rugs!