After dinner, Jason and Tim were chased out of the house by Shiller; they had been yelling inside for quite a while, insisting that they were good at cleaning, but Shiller, for the sake of his own hearing health, still sent them away.
Aisha was left behind because there was a need to figure out what to do with the reindeer meat in the fridge. She went to the backyard to sort out the parts of the barbecue grill. After assembling the already simple barbecue stove, she let Aisha grill the meat in the backyard.
Shiller was sorting things out in the front hall. He indeed hadn't done this kind of work much, but he had plenty of references. When Merkel dealt with chaos, he tended to first collect all the items that were out of place and put them aside, clean the floors, walls, and other immovable objects, and then slowly pick through the items he collected before, putting the unbroken ones back in place, sending the broken ones for repair, or simply throwing them away.
Shiller also tried this method. He collected all the fallen ornaments and sculptures from the ground and piled them in the dining room, then took out a broom and a small vacuum to clean the living room floor.
Luckily, Raven's power burst in the house wasn't too strong; it was almost like having a small tantrum in the living room. Just some items had been knocked to the ground, and some traces of black soot explosions and scratch marks from the falling objects appeared on the floor.
Shiller swept away the fragments of broken items and cleaned the dust with the vacuum cleaner, but there were still some strange marks left on the floor, which seemed to require a mop.
Merkel hardly ever used a mop because the construction materials of the manor were too pristine. Many places couldn't withstand moisture and because he cleaned frequently, there rarely were any stains that required cleaning fluid to be removed, so the mop was naturally not very useful.
The mop was also a novelty for Shiller. Aside from when he needed to use a mop to disguise when disposing of human remains in the cleaner's box, Shiller had never used it for cleaning.
But the house still provided various types of mops, including the traditional style with cloth strips, sponge mops, and some that were like stacked mesh made of material with hard rubber underneath.
Looking at the various tools hanging in the utility room, Shiller decided to pull out his phone to do some research, but at that moment, Aisha's voice came from outside, and Shiller had to put down his phone and go over.
Aisha was holding a grilled reindeer hoof and asked Shiller if he wanted to eat some. Shiller shook his head. Seeing Shiller in the utility room, Aisha put the reindeer hoof on a plate nearby and quickly ran over.
"What are you doing?" When Aisha wasn't in a hurry, she spoke human language quite well; if you could ignore her eyes and teeth, she almost passed for a cute human little girl.
"I need to mop the floor," Shiller said. "I was going to look up how to use these mops. I'm not sure if a regular mop will work on traces left by magic."
Aisha glanced back at the living room and said, "There aren't any traces of magic there; it just looks like some ordinary scratch marks. But you were going to look it up online? Why not give Alfred a call instead?"
Shiller paused. He hadn't considered that before, mainly because Alfred didn't seem like someone who cleaned the house by ordinary means. He seemed like the type of magical butler who could simply breathe on something and make the entire manor shine anew.
If it wasn't for that, it would be hard to explain how he managed to clean such a vast manor all by himself.
Shiller hesitated for a moment, feeling that such a small matter wasn't worth bothering Alfred with, especially if Alfred said that he could clean it up with just a breath, then surely they couldn't expect the old butler to make a trip over here.
Just as Shiller was about to continue typing into his phone's search bar, the phone suddenly rang. Shiller saw that it was a call from Wayne Manor.
"Hello, yes, Alfred, they had dinner here, and Aisha might stay over for the night... Is that so?"
"Actually, it's nothing much, my living room... Oh, you've heard from them already?"
Shiller, holding the phone, walked out of the utility room and into the living room, looked down at the marks on the floor and said, "No, the reflection isn't an issue, the marks are black, level with the surface, they don't look like they've damaged the floor. I used the vacuum cleaner, but it didn't pick it all up."
"Yes, they are streaks, there are some on the wooden part of the sofa's legs too. Then there are also some fan-shaped brown marks, maybe I can take a picture for you..."
Shiller kept the call going and took a few photos with his phone and sent them to Alfred. Alfred promptly began a lecture through the handset, covering topics from the constitution of stains and dust to organic chemistry, then on to engineering regarding the invention and design of cleaning tools, as well as how to comfort and teach children who have caused trouble in child psychology...
Indeed, the last part was what Shiller needed the most; he had been intending to review that information since most of the depression and irritation he would face from his wealthy clients came from their children.
After speaking for a good ten minutes more, Shiller finally hung up the phone. He had completely understood the theoretical part of removing stains; now it was time for practice.
According to Alfred, stains generally fall into two categories: those that do not damage the surface, and those that do.
The vast majority of stains are the first kind, like dust, mud stains, spilled vegetable soup, etc. These just need to have the stains themselves cleaned up.
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Solid stains should be cleaned with a vacuum cleaner, and soupy spills should be wiped up with a regular mop. If the stain contains oily components, just add some detergent. It's all very simple.
The trickier part was the latter, Alfred told Shiller a story about how the Robins played with fire in the house, and burned the entire floor of the walkway near the garden black.
The floor itself wasn't burned through, it was just the surface that was completely charred. In this case, you need to vacuum first, then wipe the stains, then mix the cleaning solution, scrub hard with a sturdy mop, and finally re-wax and polish the floor. Listening to it gave Shiller a big headache.
He carefully inspected the floor, and the black and brown marks hadn't damaged the surface. A simple wipe should do the job. The real trouble was the scratches caused when the wooden carvings and decorative items fell off and scratched the floor.
Alfred said they could also call a professional team to do the polishing, but Shiller felt it was just two or three marks and it wasn't necessary to have someone come over, so he decided to do it himself.
Aisha said she wanted to help, and Shiller didn't refuse. The sweeping and vacuuming were already done, and Shiller took the mop to the backyard, where there was a sink for washing mops.
Aisha put on gloves and followed behind him. Shiller washed the mop, and at Aisha's height, she didn't need to bend down or lift the mop high to wring out the mop head.
After thinking for a while, Aisha said, "I think we should leave more water the first time around. It won't be too hard to wipe, and it makes it easier for the detergent to foam up. The second time, we can do it a bit dryer to avoid leaving water marks."
"You know how to clean?" Shiller asked curiously.
"I've never done it myself, but that's how I saw the aunties do it in kindergarten," Aisha said while wringing out the mop. "They would send us out to play, the teacher wouldn't let me near the slide, and I didn't like to slide with them anyway, so I just watched them work from the window."
With that, Shiller also remembered how the aunties who mopped the corridors would always go back and forth two or three times. Until he grew up, he never really knew why they did it so many times, but now it seemed likely it was because a corridor needed to be wet-mopped and then dry-mopped.
Following Aisha's advice, Shiller wiped the marks with a fairly wet mop the first time around. Some of the marks were wiped away immediately, but others were more stubborn. So Shiller went to the utility room to look for the cleaning solution.
Because such houses usually have a professional butler, the cleaning solution isn't the kind of mass-market brand that you just pour on directly; it needs to be mixed. Fortunately, there was no need to follow any lab regulations here. Just get a bucket, add some water, and pour the solution according to the proportion.
Shiller glanced at the ratio Alfred had sent him via text message, picked one that was more suitable for home flooring, asked Aisha to get a bucket of water, ignoring the teeth marks on the edge of the bucket, and began pouring in the cleaning solution.
After cleaning with the mixed solution, most of the stains were removed, but there were still some scratches underneath. Shiller guessed that some might be particularly sharp, as there was a noticeable radial pattern to these scratches.
Had there been that many spots to polish, it would have been quite troublesome. Upon inspecting, Shiller found that there were no very deep scratches. He wiped it several more times, and after dry mopping, saw that other parts of the floor looked as clean as new. It still wasn't worth calling someone over.
Waxing and polishing were cumbersome tasks. Shiller and Aisha sat on the couch and studied Alfred's guide for a long time, reminding him of the feeling when he first entered the academic world and looked at others' experiment analysis reports.
Aisha had an amazing knack for hands-on practice, completely inheriting her father's manual abilities. The filling paste and polishing paste were all prepared by her, and Shiller took on the role of using child psychology to encourage her.
The remaining steps were relatively simple. They used paint to tint the paste, filled it into the deeper scratches, used a heat gun to dry it out, then applied wax for polishing, and finished it off with an electric rotating polisher, rubbing vigorously with a cloth.
The task took a bit over an hour and the results were really satisfying. Even up close, it was hard to tell the floor had once been damaged.
Then it was just a matter of moving the decorative items that had been moved earlier back into place. Shiller remembered where each one belonged, so he restored them to their original positions.
The statue that greeted the mailman had long since been cleaned and was now back on its pedestal. When the lights were turned on, the entire living room was as bright as new.
But soon Shiller found some white cotton fluff next to the bookshelf, and it was then he remembered—the Batman puppet had a slash on its back, too.
He turned the Batman puppet he had picked up from the single-seater next to him and found a rather long cut on its back, which was still leaking cotton.
Great, looks like his next lesson would be sewing. Surely he didn't happen to know someone skilled in sewing?
Thump thump thump!
The door was knocked on.
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