Unidentified Flowers
When we first announced our plans to move to Costa Rica, a dear friend asked us what we were going to do there. How were we going to spend our time?
It was an obvious and important question, and while we didn’t have a crystal clear understanding about how our daily routine would unfold, we did have some general sense that it would likely not be that much different than it was in Arizona. We spend a lot of time on our computers – for business, fun and communication with our large family. We have hobbies. The house would still need to be cleaned. We knew for sure that the laundry and shopping would take a bigger piece of our time than we were accustomed to, simply because we lacked both an automatic dryer and a car.
While we weren’t too far off on the cleaning part, we did run into a few surprises - most particularly, the amount of time we would spend mopping floors. In fact, mopping our nearly 2,000 square feet of them (1,300 sf of tile in the house and another 600 on the adjoining terrace) is typically how we start our day. And yes…that would be virtually every..single..day.
Lots and lots of tile. This photo was taken before we moved into the house. Tico houses almost never have carpet - unless it's an area rug.
Ahhh. You’re probably conjuring up pictures of lush green trees, vivid flowers, and grassy parks and imagining a damp climate with little dust. Don’t be fooled. All of that vegetation has two things in common: bugs and dirt.
In a culture where people live with their doors and windows open and spend more time outdoors than in, our tile will always come in a distant second.
During the dry season, the dirt blows in as dust and grit and gets tracked in on our shoes. Then, when the rainy season arrives, we add mud to the mix. The bugs… well, they don’t actually have a season. They fly (and crawl) in and out all day long all year long. Some stick around, but mostly they leave the same way they came in. The ones that stay generally end up as little dead dots on the floor. Sometimes they die from natural causes.. Sometimes they have a little help.
More tile -- surrounded by nature's bug habitat.
Either way, each morning we start our day by running a broom or dust mop around the floors to gather them up, along with the previous day’s accumulation of dirt, for an unapologetic and unceremonious dump in the wastebasket. Would that this would be enough, but no.
It only took a day or two of living here before that “ah ha moment” slapped us upside the head. We’d been noticing that Tica housewives mop their floors - and patios (!!) - every single day. Now we knew why. It was time to rethink our floor strategy. Surely we could come up with something better than that!
On to Plan B: Indoor shoes and outdoor shoes. Indoor shoes would get worn on the patio and in the house. Outdoor shoes get worn, well, everywhere else. Right. Like that’s going to work when the patio performs perfectly as the ultimate dust magnet and all that dirt patiently waits for us to track it inside on those “indoor” shoes!
After a few unsuccessful attempts to refine the rules, we moved on to Plan C – adding a barely wet mop, swished around everywhere that does not involve moving large furniture, after the bug removal, to the morning routine. This is followed by a leisurely third cup of coffee while we wait the floors dry. The indoor/outdoor shoe policy still stands, of course!
Not so bad. It's a quick mop and, like anything else that becomes part of your routine, you end up doing it without giving it much thought. But then there are those other 1,000 square feet or so of tile in the workshop and carport that get really, really dirty. Needless to say, we don’t worry too much about footprints in those areas, but they, too, need cleaned at least weekly to keep the dirt from abrading the surface.
And even more tile on the sub-level.
And so goes life in paradise. What do we do here? We mop the floors. (And cook, too, but that’s another topic for another day.)
Pura Vida
Bananas growing in our front yard
