Or sponga. Or squeegee. I've heard it called by all three different names. Every apartment I've been to in Israel owns one. Both of our apartments came with one of them. In fact, the apartment we are in currently came with two of them. I still haven't figure out why but I'm very curious. The first time I used the spongee was when the washing machine in our first rental leaked all over the floor. The living room was a small pond. I saw the spongee innocently leaning against the wall. I grabbed it and methodically pushed all the water down the shower drain. A week or so later I was walking past a grocery store and saw an older lady using the spongee. Unlike my understanding of the spongee, she had a rag wrapped around it. She was not pushing water around the floor. She was using the spongee to push the rag around the floor. I walked past her perplexed. Why use a rag if the spongee was an oversized squeegee? When we moved to our next place, the one we are living in currently, I didn't know how to clean the floor. Our floor consists of 36X36inch tiles with minuscule grout lines. The tiles are white. Essentially I have a huge white floor that gets dirty five minutes after washing it. I spent the first few days trying to wash the floor by rubbing any spots with a rag. The floor didn't have spots but it didn't look good. I decided it was time to pull out the squeegee. Aaron's babysitter was there at the time. I told her I was going to use it to wash the floor. She laughed and said, "oh a sponga?" That was the first time anyone had ever referred to it in my presence. I felt enlightened. Overjoyed. I finally knew its name. I poured water on the floor and pushed it around with the sponga. Aaron's babysitter told me people in Israel either have holes in their floor where they can push the water or they push it on to their balconies. The small metallic holes throughout my floors were locked so I pushed the water out on to the deck. I asked Logan's cousin how his mom washed her floors. He said she used the spongee with a ready wet rag. I didn't say anything but now the stick had three names: sponga, spongee and squeegee. At the grocery store I noticed rags you could buy that are specially used with the spongee. I decided to get the ready wet ones to make my life easier. I don't have many rags and didn't feel right washing a load of laundry with only a few rags. Today I pulled out the ready wet rag and was surprised to see it had a hole in the middle. I hope I am not sacrilegious for saying a tallit was the first thing that came to mind when I saw it. I gently put the end of the spongee through the hole. I attempted to wrap the rag around the end of the squeegee. I failed. But somehow, a small miracle, I was able to get the floors clean until Aaron returned and threw half chewed orange bits all over the floor. Fun fact about Jerusalem: People leave books out in the street for anyone passing by to take and keep for free. We are really the people of the book.
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Meet the Blogger!
I'm a mom. A writer. A lover of good fantasy. A proponent of nursing when possible. A birth advocate. I am absolutely horrible at keeping my house clean or the dishes washed or the laundry done. I strongly believe in women having a positive birth. When we start to respect women's rights to birth the way they want, we can start to treat women as equal people in this world. Archives
February 2016
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