Warning: Read this only if you want to catch another OCD

Locked in our focus has turned towards the home this yearrdquo says the therapist when we ask why we find ourselves obsessing over the kitchen and tiny details that we havenrsquot noticed in almost a decade Having been cooped up since March 2020 due to the lockdown without the daily help the nightly cleaning ritual has graduated from washing the dishes without fail and wiping the kitchen counter to a more elaborate ldquoshutting down of the kitchenrdquoNikita Dalal 26 a trained chef at her Goregaon East home The deep cleaning ritual starts with pouring hot water over the vessels and kitchen counter to remove dirt Though it costs her 30 minutes Dalal doesnrsquot miss any step because of the promise of a clutterfree view the next morning PicsSatej ShindeThe term if you are not familiar with it refers to ldquoa level of cleaning thatrsquos somewhere between postmeal cleanup and a thorough kitchen deepcleanrdquo We came across it in articles by Ella Ceron and Shifrah Combiths in Apartment Therapy a site dedicated to those in love with all things home Ceron tried a nightly ritual that extended to washing the dishes drying them and placing them back in the racks decluttering the space cleaning the counters with disinfectant wiping the floor and replacing the catrsquos water if needed Wersquod also add cleaning the dabbas yoursquove touched through the day with a damp cloth to remove any grease from themThe relief for someone who gathers OCDs like a snowball gathers size as it moves along is that they are not alone in the world At 9 pm yoursquore most likely to find Nikita Dalal a 26yearold trained chef who operates by the name madbatter25 on Instagram in her kitchen plugged into a playlist Having turned to working from home her Goregaon East kitchen she says is subject to a lot of grease during the day as are her vessels And if these are left over after the domestic help is done for the day her work day ends with a ritual that starts with pouring hot water on them and placing them in the sinkldquoThen I do the same for the platform as well Pour hot water on it add soap and scrub out the grease and add hot water again to pull the grease from it The vessels are cleaned immediately and air driedrdquo says Dalal who inherited the trait 12 years ago from her mother And if she is not around some day to complete this her mother fills in Sleeping with a messy kitchen is not an option The ritual takes 20 to 30 minutes Possibly an hour or more after Dalal has wound up her kitchen elsewhere in the city restaurateur Siddharth Kashyaprsquos workspace starts seeing a similar but perhaps more intense operationldquoTypically in commercial kitchens the winddown operation begins after the last order is taken which is around 1145 pmrdquo says Kashyap whose restaurants havenrsquot resumed operations post the lockdown The first step is to switch off the gas burners OTGs salamanders steamers and let them cool downWhen that is done the burners are removed and cleaned with a steel brush to check for any leftover food particles that may clog the pores reducing their efficiency If you havenrsquot gone and checked your gas burners at this point this article is probably not for you We checked and they are fine which is a wonder considering how we never manage to save the milk from spilling While Kashyap rattles off a long list of checks and cleans for the refrigerator and dishwasher ensuring that the detergents are refilled he says this is probably not a daily ritual that a household can adopt After all a kitchen has the entire evening shift working on this routineWhat he has mentioned and that is going to go on our list is the cleaning of wallsmdashat least till where the hand can reachmdashto wipe them of spills and to clean the sink and remove particles from the food trap Both Kashyap and Dalal clean the floor with disinfectant as the last step in the process Dalal admits that over the years nothing has been deducted from this ritual Only added For instance she uses table top chlorine which is used in commercial spaces to wipe down and disinfect the counter ldquoIn Mumbai there are a lot of flies This process helps reduce thatrdquoTo those already sold on this new ritual therersquos perhaps no need to say anything further except Dalalrsquos response of ldquothe kitchen looks spic and span the next morning and ready for a new work dayrdquo For those unconvinced that they need to sacrifice a half hourrsquos Netflix commitment for this Kashyaprsquos words might help ldquoIf meat fibres are left on the surface they start deteriorating within hours Fish within minutes This is not hygienic and itrsquos certainly not the smell you want to be greeted with when you enter the kitchen in the morning Which is why this cleanup routine is better left for the end of the day and not morning because by that time the bacteria acting on each surface inside every corner is going to be higherrdquo And you know you are addicted when you wake up at 1 am for no reason at all and find yourself cleaning up your kitchen because yoursquod left it messy when yoursquod crashed truestory