Spic and Span

Non-employed or not, I like keeping a weekend as a weekend.  There are two commandments to ensure this: ‘Thou shalt make sure there are nice sausages for Sunday breakfast’ and ‘Thou shalt do no housework’.  Essential to this ritual; a tidy-up of the house on a Friday morning, to enable that lovely ‘start-of-the-weekend’ feeling.

How is it then, that by Monday morning, as well as sausage-calorie guilt, the house needs to be tidied all over again? 

Evidently, my Friday morning spic has insufficient span.

Monday evening, post-hoovering, bed changed, loads of washing, banana bread, applesauce and granola made, yoga yogi’d, George MacDonald chapters read, summer star made, bin bags changed, recycling recycled, voting paper posted (tempted to recycle that too), there were still items to be tidied. 

I obviously need to be more diligent, more often.

Pondering that enormity, I decided to start small and clean the teapot.  I have a special spout-sized bottle brush for the purpose.  I’m not even joking.

I once heard someone on television maintain that the inside of a teapot should never be cleaned.  One almost fell off one’s chair.  The tannins in tea cause the teapot stains.  When tannins cool, they become bitter.  This is why when making iced tea, it must be made with cold water and left overnight to infuse, not with boiling water, left to cool.  If the inside of a teapot isn’t kept clean, the old tannins will reactivate whenever new boiling water is added, rendering the tea bitter. 

If bitter is one’s bag (intended), there’s no need to concern oneself with the joys of spout-brushing.  However, if one has purchased some prettily-tinned, delicate leaves, from the blessed F&M for instance, one would be wasting one’s money, and ruining one’s tea, if one leaves one’s teapot interior unspic or unspan.

Images for this journal have been posted on Insta @purplehaze_journals