Packing the Hospital

Closing down a hospital is something I'd never done before.  One ward at a time, we'd close down, scrub everything twice with bleach, take it all apart, and stash it somewhere else, then strip and wax the floors.  Once that was done, we'd refill the ward with all kinds of things that needed to be stored during the sail.  Everything was packed or stacked tightly and then tied down with various straps so it couldn't move.  The process was hard work, but with a little music and a lot of humour, it was also a fun job.

How many nurses does it take to pack up a hospital??? As many as you can spare, makes the work light and fun... kind of.

Scrubbing is important, and sometimes it requires you to get on your hands and knees.  We were even provided with kneepads to help protect our knees.

I'm not talking protecting them from kneeling on hard surfaces.  No.  Protect them while we scrubbed in the stripper.  Funny story: Our nurse in charge of packing down the hospital got us the container of full strength stripper and told us we needed to dilute it, but couldn't remember the concentration or how long to let it sit before scrubbing/rinsing etc.  So she tried to look it up online.  Normally an easy task.  Until you use internet in a place where inappropriate sites are blocked and you try searching for "floor stripper."  Strangely enough, that was blocked!!  hehehehe!  There were a few educated guesses made from previous experience until we could get the proper instructions.

We scrubbed by hand.

We scrubbed with a buffer (harder to use than you might think, it takes off in circles around you if you don't hold just the right tilt/lean and pressure)

We dried floors with towels (and may have had towel races and dances etc)

And then we threw cardboard taped together across the floors and packed things up and strapped them down.

Shrink-wrap where necessary.

Please don't pack the nurses in!!

And climb over and around to make sure things are placed properly and there's no stowaways hidden!