Clean Freaks

Italians are clean freaks. Sometimes this doesn't appear to be true, especially in big cities that are tourist areas or in many public areas but in Italian homes it is immediately obvious. If you have the opportunity to visit an Italian home you will notice it is remarkably clean, not just ordinarily clean but like military barracks clean. There is no dirt, no dust and frequently the house and its belongings look like they are not lived in.

As a result three chains of stores flourish that sell nothing but cleaning products and things related thereto. Near us are one of each: The largest chain: Acqua e Sapone (Water and Soap); the next EuroPlanet Casa and a smaller chain Prodet. (There are web sites for each of these, I did not hyperlink them because I thought no one needs to see another retail website.) Essentially they each do the same thing: sell cleaning supplies and implements for the home, bath, body, car, jewelry, shoes, grill and anything else you can think of to clean and probably some you have not. So you get a store the size of an American drugstore that is stocked with nothing but cleaning supplies and implements.

It's obsessive compulsive heaven here. One frequent complaint of expats is the length of time it takes to do laundry. Older washing machines generally have minimum wash cycles of 60 minutes; newer ones will have one cycle where the wash cycle is as short as 30 minutes. Many Italians opt for 90 minute wash cycles with water at 90 degrees C (194 degrees F). Washers here have only cold water hook ups and use internal heating elements to heat the water to a designated temperature. On many machines, the coldest water cycle you can select is 40 degrees C (104 degrees F). When you explain to Italians that Americans use cold or warm water with much shorter wash cycles, they are shocked. We saw they same thing in some German friends of ours who bought a home in the US. They were certain their clothes were never well washed. In fact, there is no perceptible difference.

Here, Mr. Clean becomes Senor Lindo (same bald head). He does not come in just one type or several types of cleaners but in unique formulations for every type of dirt or surface imaginable. I gave up trying to count the number of different Mr. Lindo formulations the stores carry. There have been attempts to introduce all purpose cleaners here but generally they have not been well accepted.

So if you go in the store and look for stainless steel sink or counter top cleaners, you will not just find several brands to choose from but also several different choices from each brand depending on the type of dirt on your counter top and on the variety of stainless steel you have. This holds true for every imaginable cleaning situation. One of those quirks of another culture.