Regarding the domestic life...

So, I quit my job on Friday and have since been doing little more than house chores, writing cover letters and canvassing every shop in the neighbourhood for jobs. But, with regard to the domestic life, I have discovered a few things.

First, Exit Mould (I know it's spelled wrong... it's the British way) is undoubtedly the best mold remover that I've ever seen in my life. We've had this weird problem the last week or so with mold growing on our bedroom wall and our housing agent recommended using it to remove it. Well, the stuff says "don't use on painted surfaces" so I'll probably just use soap and water, but in the meantime I figured I would try it on some other moldy surfaces around the house...

*Enter Bathroom*

Our bathroom is tiled floor to ceiling and the shower has been growing some pretty difficult mold deep within the tile grout for sometime now. No matter how much I scrub, I have never been able to get it out. But without any wiping or scrubbing, one spray of Exit Mould was able to get it all off. I am seriously amazed, people. Really. Our shower looks amazingly clean and I've never been happier.

But of course my happiness was short lived.

The second thing I discovered, Australian toilets are complete blocks of porcelain junk. Ours is one of those water saving toilets (like pretty much every toilet in the country) with two buttons on top--one for half flush and one for whole. It's been obvious that the thing has been on it's way out for a while now but yesterday when I pushed the button, I nearly pushed it over the edge. It just kept running water. Now, there's no way for me to explain this well without taking pictures but inside the back is a giant mechanical tube that must be fit just right into the drain at the bottom. However, you can't see what you're doing because the tube is attached to the lid and in order to put it in the hole, you must put the lid on. That means you can't see anything. And when I got it in the hole and the water kept running, there was no way for me to just look inside and find out why.

All this time the water was still running and I was worried about an ever heightening water bill so I turned it off. And I'm glad I did. It took me three hours to fix the stupid thing!! It was rough. And in the process I found a HUGE cache of mold that I'm pretty sure the previous tenants never bothered to clean up. In fact, there was so much mold in the back of the toilet, I'm pretty sure the ones before them never cleaned it either. Luckily I had my Exit Mould with me... :)

Third, I have found that getting internet hooked up in your house is a ridiculous and expensive endeavour. Australia STILL doesn't have DSL lines so you have to use clear wire but in order to do that, you need to rent a phone line. That means dealing with Telstra--an evil monopoly set up by the government some time ago that pretty much overcharges and complicated everything. They are legally required to cooperate and share their lines with other companies but the process is long. So long that it took us three weeks to get internet. But Tuesday the little green light on our modem turned on and now we have power. You can expect photos to come in the near future.

My fourth and final discovery this week has been the lint catcher on our dryer. I've always known there was one (somewhere) because there is a sticker telling you to empty it every time. However, I couldn't find it. It looked like it was on the front of the door but there was no way to get to it--the thing was screwed together. But no, that is the lint holder. We've since discovered that indeed, you do have to unscrew it to remove the lint. What kind of non-sense is this?!? Who wants to get out their toolkit just to empty the lint holder every time they do laundry? I'm rather perturbed by this fact. I miss my good ol' American dryer.

So, there you have it. The ins and outs of my domestic life. When you have no job and no kids, there is little else to be excited about than Exit Mould. Even Facebook gets boring after a couple hours. However, I do have an interview today with a temping agency. Let's hope that goes well and that I'll start bringing in some money soon.

More to come!!