Week One - Task Three - "Almost Ready"

[Anne-Marie Gagne]

It takes you guys a bit to find an empty classroom that will be best suited for your needs. It’s on the fourth floor, so practically in the middle of the castle. Will take about the same time to get to the seventh floor as it would to go down to the dungeons. (The room might even be a good place to just use as a place you and your friend can use to hang out that’s not the library once your self-imposed task to clean the castle is finished.)

You and your friend take some of the broken pieces of furniture and other debris around the room and transfigure them into most of the supplies you need.

“First order of business, we’ll clean this room so we have a base of operations and then we’ll make a plan on how to tackle the rest of the castle!” you say.

“One question, do you expect us to be able to move furniture without magic too or are you going to allow that at least?” your friend asks and you think about it for a second before nodding.

“Yeah, with your noodle arms we’d spend most of the day just moving the furniture out of the way to clean under them.” You let out a laugh as your friend shoves you slightly in offense (though they’re laughing too).

There’s lots of spells out there that can help with cleaning if one puts their mind to it. So for this task, I’d like y’all to tell me in 100 words or more which spell you’d like to have in real life that would help you make cleaning a much easier task and how you would use it effectively.

Please post your reply by April 30th at 11:59PM HOL Time. If you complete all of the Week One tasks by the end of the month, you’ll receive a BONUS 10 beans/sapphires.

[Dibyarup James Potter]

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The biggest problem faced by muggles while cleaning a place on their own is moving heavy objects to clean all the accumulated dust underneath and behind them. Sometimes they just wish they could "magically" move those objects without having to use all of their physical strength which is quite tiring.

But as a wizard, I do not need to worry about any of that. So my first choice for a spell to help me with cleaning will always be the Levitation Charm (Incantation: Wingardium Leviosa). It will help me levitate heavy objects like sofas and pianos so that I can clean the space underneath or behind them, and it will also help me put things back in place with great ease, even if the thing is quite heavy, for example, a big suitcase or a piece of furniture after it has been moved for cleaning. However, I wouldn't just clean the dirt with my hands after moving the heavy objects with the Levitation Charm. I would use the Cleaning Charm to actually clean the dirt.

[River Fenwick]

The cleaning spell I'd most like to have in real life is the wiping spell, Tergeo. It's such a convenient spell, mainly used for liquids, but it can be used to clean other things. For example, Harry Potter used the spell to remove dust from photographs in Bathilda Bagshot's house. Dust would likely be my primary usage for the spell. In real life, I have a dog that's highly allergic to dust mites that, as the name suggests, live in dust. It's a struggle to keep a place dust-free since it's unlikely to get it all. Therefore, this spell would greatly benefit my dog and myself for this particular usage of the spell.

[Janne Halla]

I'm not sure it's technically classified as a cleaning spell, but I'd love to be able to use Reparo, also known as the Mending Charm or the Repairing Charm.

A lot of messes that I do is usually when I break things, either at home or at work. For example, I accidentally dropped a bowl, glass, or plate so many times in my life, and cleaning up the shards and other spilt things or always a chore to me.

That's why I'd want to use this spell, just with a flick of a wand, or rather with the circle of a wand, the mess from the broken things would disappear. Also, as a bonus, you'd have your broken thing back whole!

Sure, it doesn't put the spilled liquid back into the glass, but the cleaning work is halfway done!

[Viviana Kingston]

I personally think the pack charm would do me a lot of good in real life. I have too many things and so few storage facilities, that the pack charm would automatically do most of the work for me, especially when it comes to laundry day where baskets upon baskets of clothes come out from the dryer which surprises me the most because I honestly didn’t remember so much going in for washing. And it would such a life saver for my book collection! I honestly do not have the heart to pack my books away, so my mother has the dreary job of doing so, so to save her the trouble of packing and me the trouble of losing some hair in the process, the pack charm is the perfect fit.

[Prof. Felicia Hartwick]

For me it would have to be a spell that would help me NOT having to put my hands into a bucket of water that some sort of cleaning product was added to it. I do dread having to mop the floors in my house because I have to wring out the mop. Hot water and household liquid cleaners make a mess out of my hands. Usually after using any hot water I get these little bumps on my fingers and boy do they itch... so needless to say... I get someone else to do that chore.

So I'm hoping the Scourgify charm would come in handy for me. Since it is a washing spell, I'm sure to would help me with the mopping of floors... not to mention... cleaning the bath tub... the dishes ..... hand washing laundry... well, just about anything that involved water and having to put my hands into water.

[Lex Green]

I would have to agree with Fels - if I could have any cleaning spell in the non-magical world, it would definitely be scourgify. I have a lot of sensory issues around cleaning and I absolutely hate the feeling of having any kind of dirt on my hands, so it would definitely be useful to be able to clean things magically. The biggest problem for me is doing dishes - I really hate the feeling of putting my hands into dirty water, and the idea that I'm trying to clean a dirty dish with an already dirty sponge, so being able to just clean them magically would be a great help.

[Hiya Debnath]

While the Scouring Charm, "Scourgify", can help wash a lot of things and would certainly be very useful for me, there is one charm that can really help me and that is the Extension Charm, "Capacious Extremis". I tend to hoard a lot of things and can find it very difficult to throw anything away. At the same time, too many things can cause a mess in a limited space, despite a lot of organization. Therefore, I would really love to have the Extension Charm to create space to fit in a lot of things together. Besides, I think that the Locomotor Charm may be useful for the same reason as the Levitation Charm, i.e., to move heavy furniture like couches and beds around, to clean under them. Another spell from the wizarding world that I would find really useful would be the Vacuum Cleaner spell. Using a Muggle vacuum cleaner can be a tedious task by itself, especially for witches like me who keep messing the vacuum cleaner and damaging it because our inherent magic interferes with electricity (eckeltricity). The Vacuum Cleaner spell would solve that problem for me.

[Emily Spencer]

One spell I can see being extremely useful is Accio. Maybe it's just me, but it never fails that I always manage to forget something when I am gathering up cleaning supplies. Let me tell you, having to run up and down stairs multiple times in the space of 5 minutes can be quite exhausting. So yes, having a spell that would stop all that needless running up and down and bring the forgotten objects to me would be very welcome, especially if I were a Muggle.

Another one Muggle-me might find useful is Ascendio. This harkens back to the old adage "work smarter, not harder". Instead of all that bending and stooping to get supplies from the floor/counter/etc. when you are cleaning a higher surface, just levitate them up to you. Problem solved!

Two 'must-haves' are Tergio and Scourgify. The first causes water to evaporate, which would be great for quick-drying floors/surfaces as well as help to clean up any spills with minimum effort. Ask anyone who knows me and they can attest to my clumsiness, so I can see me using this one quite a bit. Scourgify is a general cleaning spell, and it goes without saying that any busy Muggle (and me!) would welcome having to spend less time on cleaning chores.

[Adeline Morior]

I would think Scourgify to clean things to be an obvious choice for myself but I would like to combine or add a few more as I can imagine having multiple areas being busy and cleaned would make things a lot easier. Adding to it I would like to add the Washing up spell that enchants dirty dishes to wash themselves. While I am cleaning here, the dishes can be done there and so on. Helpful spells I might enjoy in real life with these can be Tergeo, the charm to syphon liquids and clean objects, the vacuum cleaner spell and a levitation spell like Wingardium to help get under those heavy objects or in those covered up corners.

I tend to drop things a it but I am very picky on how clean things need to be. The spells mentioned would really be such a massive help so I can get it done quick and effectively without hurting my back. If I break things I would juts use Reparo to try nd mend it back without worrying about cleanup of small pieces and such.

[Katherine Laurier]

A cleaning spell that I would love to have in real life is the Mending Charm (Reparo). Besides being able to fix broken objects as if they had never been broken, it was also used once to clean up a whole house - repair the damages and put all the messy objects back into place. This would be perfect to have in real life to not use up a lot of time arranging. Wingardium Leviosa or any spells that lift or move objects in different directions are also great options because you can easily put things in their respective places and clean the floor or the areas below certain objects.

[Ellie Vernez]

One of the spells I would love to have in the real world is Accio. I think this spell would be very beneficial to cleaning. I've lost count on how many times I've taken cleaning spray, or a cloth or the dust pan into one room and then gone into another and forgot to pick it up. So Accio would come in handy so you don't need to walk back and forth all the time.
The hot air charm would be good when you have a load of washing to dry instead of having it all in radiators or waiting till it dries on the line.
Mobiliarbus would be good for when you need to move wooden furniture a few feet of the ground to hoover or mop underneath it.