A Small Price to Pay   (Summer 2012) 

If someone had told me I would be cleaning restrooms in retirement I would have told them they were crazy.   But here I am, cleaning restrooms to live for “free”.  It turns out that so far it has not been gross but I imagine that could change at any minute.  As with other things I tend to go overboard.  I like to keep my cleaning supplies in order and Jim washes out our floor mops daily.  We hadn’t been using the public restrooms at our other spots because it was fairly easy to empty our tanks.  Well it was very easy for me since I didn’t do it, Jim did.  Here, we have to pull the tanks or should I say, Jim has to pull the tanks a long distance and it is very inconvenient, so we are reduced to taking showers in the public bathrooms.  As long as I am cleaning them, I am okay with that because I know how much bleach and disinfectant I use. 

     Each park has their own rules about cleaning and their own techniques.  We had the best teachers at Koreshan State Historic site that there could be in bathroom cleaning techniques, plus they came everyday and helped us.  At St. Joe no one comes to help and we have two bathrooms to do everyday.  The guy that was here doing it until we came never cleaned the mops and didn’t use the mop bucket to mop the floors.  How do you mop floors with no bucket? Needless to say those restrooms are looking a lot better now that we are in charge.  I also don’t have to worry about taking my shower down there either because I always double disinfect my shower stall.

   Once when I told one of the campers that I never thought I would be cleaning restrooms she said that she had been a flight attendant and that was part of their duties.  So I guess even some job I   thought was glamorous has it’s drawbacks. So for the moment I am reduced to cleaning restrooms but I envision the day when that will not be part of my duties.  In the meantime if that’s what I have to do to live for “free” and see all of the beautiful sights I guess it is a small price to pay.