Monday’s been a bit of a down day. I’ve had trouble finding motivation. Plus, Monday is the day I get my big food delivery each week, and I have to spend so much time doing my disinfection process I just don’t feel like I can really get into anything else. I’m not sure when the delivery arrive, it could be any time between 8am and 10pm. The food does come in an insulated bag with a freezer pack, so it’s ok to leave it sitting for a bit, but I’d rather get the meat and veg into my refrigerator as soon as possible.
And so I try and do little admin tasks until the doorbell rings, and then I glove up, and dive into disinfection. I put on my thick blue rubber gloves, and spray the shoe bench with Dettol. Then I open my front door, pick up the box and set the box down on the bench. I wipe the whole box down with a Dettol wipe, and then, still wearing gloves, cut open the tape on the box. I wipe everything else down that I can see from the top of the box that’s safe to wipe with Dettol, and then I start sorting.
The table, cloth pulled back, gets sprayed down with Dettol, and then everything that is fully packaged in plastic, or thickly skinned (think bananas), gets placed on the Dettol-soaked table, and then sprayed with more Dettol.
Any thin-skinned veg and veg in bags with holes get set in the sink. I then wash each of them for 20 seconds with soap as I would my hand.
The rest of the contents of the box get a wipe down with the Dettol wipes, including the recipe cards. The wipes kill the virus without soaking through and contaminating food.
Then, all the waste goes out in the rubbish or recycling bins. Anywhere the gloves or container touched get wiped down with a Dettol wipe. And then I reorganise the fridge to fit all the new food in properly. My fridge is tiny, smaller than the average UK under-counter fridge, and not designed to hold a full week’s worth of food. So fitting everything in during COVID-19 isolation is like playing a game of Tetris. All told, this usually takes me 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Today, my delivery came at around 11:30am, so I paused in the middle of the process to eat lunch (which also gave me some more room in the fridge). But by the time it’s done I barely have time to get back into work.
In some ways the process is positive: it makes me feel safe, because I know I’ve been thorough, and I find it a really strange mindfulness/gratitude practice, considering all the human labour and steps that have gone into the preparation of my food. But to be honest, it’s exhausting. I already have so much time in my life taken up by things I have to do to take care of my health. I have to exercise, but I have to do slow types of exercise that take longer because I have to keep everything low impact. I need more sleep. I take a half hour every week just to set up my medications. And there’s a lot more… So I suppose I resent this whole disinfection thing as one more thing I have to do.
I don’t dwell on this stuff much, but like I said, Monday’s been a bit of a downer. I’m sure I’ll rally tomorrow, and shake this off. But sometimes it gets to me, and it’s important to be honest about that, too. Stay well, my isolated readers, and keep disinfecting.
This Isolation Life 