OCD Cleanliness

Due to our school closing because of swine flu - and the need to create ridiculous busy work - we had to sanitize every toy in the entire school with a mixture of bleach and water. It was honestly a bit over-the-top, but I think the teachers did it because we still have to come to work and have nothing else to do.

The process consisted of this: 1. Carry every toy from all five classrooms outside 2. Set up two washing stations armed with tubs of water/bleach mixture and also clean water 3. Put on rubber gloves and get to work

My co-worker Kait and I were in charge of one of the washing stations and some of the Korean teachers were in charge of the other. Our standards were vastly different from the Koreans. Kait was manning the bleach water tub and I was manning the clean water tubs. Toys were dumped in the bleach water, and Kait just swirled and shook them around for a few seconds, then I dipped them in clean water.

The Korean teachers put the toys in the bleach water and then sat scrubbing each and every toy with a brush or sponge before rinsing them in the clean water. We kept telling them it was unnecessary to scrub the toys, but they kept right on doing it. Each to their own…

The whole process of cleaning the toys was master-minded by the Korean teachers. If it were up to us (foreigners) we would have just dunked toys in bleach water, spread them out on the ground and hosed them off and left them to dry. The Korean teachers said the process HAD to go like this: Scrub the toys with bleach water, rinse with clean water TWO times, then HOSE the toys a final time. Then let them dry. They argued that the bleach mixture was too toxic, so we had to thoroughly rinse.

We were like, okay, if the bleach mix is THAT toxic, then why do you think you have to scrub so hard? If it’s that toxic, just touching the toy to the bleach water will do the trick. Haha. It was frustrating at the time, but looking back, it’s pretty funny.

Oh, and then to top it off, one of the teachers decided we HAD to bleach all the frickin sandbox toys. Yeah…… We only did half and everyone decided that was just plain stupid. Just hose the dumb toys and call it good! Made me seriously consider never buying my children toys. Or just never cleaning them.

We’ve been cleaning for two work days. Glad we’re doing some manual labor. Honestly, it is nice having a break from the kids, but management seems to just be making up jobs for us so we have to keep coming in. Anyway, next week is our last week before coming to the States for vacation!!

YAY!