As he exited the shop he hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should take a different route, but ended up returning the way he came, as he wanted to make some purchases on the food street.
Stopping at the old lady's stand, he got four pieces of flatbread for one small silver nugget, and then he got a full roasted duck for three small pieces of silver.
And after another twenty or so minutes of walking he was home.
After placing all of his new purchases down in the courtyard near the shed. Di Tou grabbed the food, writing materials, and candles before bringing them inside and setting them on the writing desk.
Returning outside, he placed the sewing kit on one of the shelves in the shed, and put the three bags next to the original leaf bag that he had outside.
Satisfied, Di Tou made it back inside and looked for a way to light the candles.
…
F*ck.
Sighing, Di Tou made a mental note to get matches or a flame stick the next time he headed out.
For now, he opened all of the windows hoping to get a bit more natural light.
Then he took out two sheets of paper and a charcoal stick, putting the remaining paper in a drawer, and leaving the charcoal sticks out. He then made a checklist for things he needed to buy the next day, and things that he needed to clean today, or at least anything he could think of off the top of his head.
"Hmm… I need various weights… matches… and I should ask Xiao Fu what he knows about where to deposit trash nearby and how he cultivates…"
After jotting down a couple of notes. It was time to get cleaning!
First, using the small basin of water he had collecting in the morning, he wet one of the two rags he had gotten from the shed.
An upgrade from just wiping things down - water.
Starting from the table and chairs, Di Tou spent a good half hour carefully wiping the table down. Doing his best to reach into every nook and cranny, as well as wiping over every surface twice, to make sure he didn't miss anything.
This time he was looking to see how high he could get efficiency without any special methods.
Taking a step back and looking at the table that now had a slight shine to it in the sunlight streaming in through the window, Di Tou felt rather satisfied.
It had been awhile since he had last felt that something was pristine. After all, as a working class individual he never focused too much on making sure everything was clean, much less pristine, and as a child of a typical working family, while his parents took turns cleaning the house, it wasn't like they were doing a deep clean.
At most the objective was to get rid of any bigger dust balls and anything that was visibly dirty.
For instance the dining table, which was similar to what he had before him right now, of course they would scrub it down before and after meals. But the way that they rubbed down the table was normal.
Like most people, they would just go for any obvious stains, and then broadly wipe the majority of the table so everything has been "touched" as to how sanitized or complete the job is, it really isn't a problem unless you happen to come upon something dirty there later.
So this felt good.
Finishing the table, Di Tou hesitated for a second, wondering if he should just check the scroll now, but decided he was in the zone, and to clean up another thing or two before checking everything altogether.
The next thing he decided to do was refold the bed. This wasn't particularly easy for one person to do, and while had done an okay job the night before, there were some obvious crumples left from when he laid out the sheets.
This time, he took everything off the bed. Which was a collection of two box pillows, a large woolen blanket, a smaller lighter cloth blanket, and then two layers of sheets, as well as a somewhat thick cloth layer that rested between the sheets.
Carrying everything, he hesitated for a moment before putting everything on the table he just cleaned.
Hah, some things just aren't meant to last.
Then, starting from the bottom layer of sheets, he took his time slowly readjusting it so that there were as few crinkles as possible.
After a couple of tries, he felt relatively content with what he had and moved onto the cloth layer.
The cloth was somewhat thick to begin with, and was larger then the bed, so it seemed like it had been folded to fit between the two layers of sheets. This wasn't that hard for Di Tou to do, although he had to try twice as the first time the cloth had gotten rather crumpled when he tried folding it. Some things just weren't meant to be done as one person.
Then came the portion that gave Di Tou the most trouble, the second layer of sheets. Because he had to layer this set of sheets over the prior set alongside the cloth, when he messed up he would also crumple the cloth layer that was between the sheets, which meant that he had to take off this layer of sheets, redo the cloth layer, before trying again.
Of course, most people would probably just smooth it out as best they could by pushing around on the crumples from the second sheet layer, but, Di Tou was unfortunately trying to make this all as perfect as possible.
Three failures later Di Tou couldn't help but grumble about the convoluted set of sheets, "What an annoying system. What's wrong with just one set of sheets and a blanket."
But, eventually, Di Tou managed to get a pretty good attempt and decided that would have to do for now, although he was a little annoyed that it wasn't perfect still. It seemed like he was developing OCD.
The two blankets weren't hard, just a bit annoying to do as one person. The only thing was he wasn't sure if he wanted to just layer the thin blanket below the thicker blanket, or to make them into two separate piles parallel to each other placed on the bed.
In the end he decided to do them layered one on top of each other, as for the reason… he didn't really have one. It just made a bit more sense in his brain.
Lastly he replaced the two pillows.
*Ta-da* one very neatly arranged bed.
Let us all give Di Tou a round of applause.