Bathtub Stains, Mildew Pains, and Life Lessons
This weekend, I spent hours cleaning out our apartment's bathtub. It was one of those chores we could easily complete before the last minute as our moving day comes in two weeks.
Two weeks. That is now the window of time before my wife’s and my big move. As renters, we are upgrading to a townhouse. We are both super excited about having a home with an upstairs as well as one and a half bathrooms. If we could lug our current bathtub with us to haul up those townhouse stairs and install it ourselves, it would be easier than cleaning the tub.
For most of the thirteen years my wife and I have shared this apartment, the same long stain has been stuck on our tub’s base. About a foot long and three inches wide, it is almost like a brown island standing in the middle of a porcelain sea. Around the corners of our tub, there also exist several other patches of brown or black. These stains have never been able to come off.
Apparently, these stains are quite common. Particles or chemicals in water can stain the porcelain or acrylic bases of any tub no matter how often you clean it. Furthermore, mold or mildew can rest in the nooks and crannies of any bathroom fixture. If only they could be wiped away as easily as they appear and grow.
I have tried so many things — Zep mildew remover, vinegar cleaner, Scrubbing Bubbles, and other generic cleaners. Finally, after some serious brush scrubbing, combining vinegar and other cleaners seemed to work. Luckily, this did not seem to lead to any dangerous odors or anything like that. Even the largest stain is breaking up!
However, I may have to keep at the stain until moving day. I’ll clean the spots and strains as best as I can.
I could have thought of numerous other ways to spend my weekend. But hey, I did get my daily steps in by scouring two home improvement stores! Strangely, scrubbing years-old stains also helped me to reflect on many life lessons.
Some stains can never be removed(though ideally, they can fade with time).
The same is true for life. Hardships, tragedies, and offenses certainly can leave scars that never fully heal. However, time, faith, love, and care can at least transform the scars into resilient protective tissue.
Sometimes, I wonder if those stains would have broken loose if I had just scrubbed those stains harder in the past. But the stains remained through as many tough scrubbings as I can remember.
For hard times in life, we must credit ourselves for giving so much of our deeper selves and best efforts. We cannot help it if our crystal balls couldn’t even begin to peer into the boundless depths of unknown oceans.
The funny thing is, these stains did not come from some foreign substance. It’s not like we showered after mud-rolling or swamp swimming. The stains came from certain particulates in the water itself. The tub was built to hold the water.
Similarly, life’s hardships and adversities are not always a form of punishment or some unknown variable creeping in. They are so often a natural part of life’s very unfolding. And so, life’s haphazard discombobulations can ideally balance themselves out.
Perhaps we all dream of household appliances, bathroom fixtures, and rooms and floors with stainless and spotless cleanliness. This is the ideal that all our scrubbing, vacuuming, disinfecting, and sweeping goes towards. But is not the striving for cleanliness a continuous journey?
