I just had five wonderful days off from work and I spent part of one of those days cleaning the outside windows of my apartment. With shame, I must admit it has been years since the last time I cleaned the outside of my windows. It got to the point the dirt was obstructing the view outside on parts of some of the windows.
The weather was pretty good on Friday, so I didn’t mind stepping out onto my balcony with a few buckets of water, a large bottle of window cleaner, and a telescopic brush/squeegee. I started by spraying each window with a healthy amount of window cleaner. Then I dipped the brush into a bucket of warm water and started wiping away the dirt and grime. I kept dipping the brush into the water and cleaning until the window looked sparking (or close to it).
After doing this several times, the buckets of clean water turned almost black with dirt. The water got dirty rather quickly, telling me these windows were caked on with a ton of dirt. I had to change the buckets of water a few times, otherwise I’d just be cleaning the window with dirty water.
After I was done, the view outside was much improved and I no longer had to see through a layer of grime. While my windows are now somewhat clean, the rest of my balcony remains very dirty. It’s quite difficult to clean my balcony because I can’t allow any water to go into the drain. The balcony drain just exits over the side of the balcony and goes straight down. There’s a strata bylaw that states any water coming from a balcony is prohibited and is subject to a fine.
In years past, I have waited for a rainy day to disguise my patio washing runoff as just rain but it’s difficult to plan for such a day. In the meantime, I can just use a brush and dustpan to clean up the large, solid bits of dirt.