Affordances in cleaning the bathroom out

Hagedorn (2000) states that affordance is anything which the environment can offer the individual which is pertinent to the role challenge and can facilitate role competence. I have split affordances into 3 categories to look in depth at the affordances in cleaning.

Firstly the connection and action properties:

Last time I cleaned was cleaning our flat bathroom. I hadn’t cleaned the bathroom personally since before I had gone on placement so I figured it must be my ‘turn’ as we try to keep it about even. The shower was orange and yellow around the bottom and the edges of the shower cubicle and there were odd long hairs everywhere from living with so many girls. My only hope was that it wasn’t going to be filled with hair and scum again the next day that hopefully the cleaning would be respected. I grabbed all the cleaning products, the rags my mum gave us and the buckets to clean the shower so it doesn’t feel horrible when I stand in it. I started cleaning the shower walls up high, working down to the scum and then the basin, the floor and then the toilet last. Each time something got clean it felt like a great sense of achievement for me, that I had done something thorough and well.

I had almost finished cleaning and I rinsed out the shower and then I realise the water wasn’t going down the drain. I asked my flatmate about it and we decided to pour some Draino down it to see if this would fix the problem. We poured the stuff down without really reading the instructions – later realising we should have been wearing masks and gloves while using it. The Draino didn’t work so we had to then call the landlord to get a plumber in. I was disappointed my cleaning job never truly finished and I knew I would have to come back the next day after the plumber and re-clean some areas.

Secondly communication:

The task started off as a solitary experience which was brought on by care of the environment I lived in and the care for the others I live with for us all to share a pleasant environment. This environment gave me a sense of place I belong to as well as a sense of place socially within the flat. I believe that I chose to clean the bathroom as it was part of my own expectations and a learnt behaviour from my parents and my upbringing. Louw (1998) states that observational learning or modelling refers to the viewpoint that people can learn behaviours by observing the behaviours of others. It was my parent’s behaviours that in turn lead to my behaviour. As the task developed I began to branch out socially and look to others for advice and negotiation of what the next step could be. I involved others who could be affected by any decision made.

Third and final section is the moral properties:

GOOD:

The good moral properties for me were that I was completing the task properly, the degree of precision, the gift it was to my flatmates and making do with the available materials.

BAD:

The bad moral property would be the waste of product – had I put the product to its full use?

 Maybe I need to consider something like the following clip to make the affordances have more good moral properties.

REFERENCES:

·         Hagedorn, R. (2000). Tools for practice in occupational therapy: A structured approach to core skills and processes. London: Harcourt Publishers Ltd.

·         Louw, D. A. (1998). Human development. (2^nd Ed). South Africa: ABC Press