Pinoy in Singapore

One thing I noticed when we moved to Singapore is that most people don’t bring in their shoes inside their houses. Though we don’t leave our shoes outside the door like our neighbors do, we followed the practice of not using shoes inside the house. Instead, we have a collection of bedroom slippers from different hotels we stayed at and use them when we’re inside our house. It makes it easier to maintain the house specially if you don’t have a maid to help you.

But even though our rented unit is on the 4th floor and we don’t open any windows except for the ones in the laundry area, our unit can still get really dusty to a point that we used to vacuum every weekend. But eventually, it got less frequent and we only do general cleaning once a month.

But lately we started to feel creepy crawlies whenever we lay on the carpet to watch TV. One day we realized that the creepy crawlies we were feeling are actually super tiny dust mites. This kicked my OC tendencies into action since by newborn nephew is set to visit us this summer. I started vacuuming the carpet but the dust mites doesn’t seem to go away.

From my research, dust mites are pretty common and are actually harmless but their excrement can cause irritation for some people. Nevertheless, I don’t like sharing my living space with these creepy crawlies. Usually, they can be killed with exposure to direct sunlight but our living area doesn’t get that much sun. Also the regular vacuum cleaners only makes the dust mites airborne since it blows the dust into the air.

My research led me to steam cleaning because dust mites can be killed by steam cleaning. This is how I got to know of the Osim iEcologi.

I was thinking of whether to hire professional cleaners to do spring cleaning for our house which would set me back about S$450.00 for one session or buy a second hand iEcologi and do the cleaning myself. I decided to go for the latter.

We got our second hand iEcologi on ebay for S$520. The seller even threw in her uZAP for free.

We used it last weekend and steamed the hell out of those dust mites. We did the carpets and the floors, the furnitures, the pillows, the matresses. From my experience, the iEcologi is very effective. The carpet feels clean and there’s no more creepy crawlies. Our floors are clean as ever too. I’ve been trying to mop out streaks (OC alert!) on our floors for how many times now but I can’t seem to get them out. The iEcologi left our floors streak free and squeaky clean. It can also be used as a garment steamer which we were also planning on getting because we’re having a hard time keeping up with ironing duties at home.

The cons I can think of for the iEcologi is that it’s too bulky. Osim markets this product with a female model using it but I’m pretty sure most women will find it difficult to use unless they’ll use it as a garment steamer because it’s very heavy and difficult to move around. It took both Mr. Tsiken and I to use it effectively because of its weight.

Another con would be it’s retail price of S$1588. I would definitely not buy it brand new because it’s just too expensive for a doodad. I already found it hard to part with the S$520 we paid for the second hand one but at least with the second hand iEcologi, I would get my money’s worth in just 3-4 times of using it if I think of having to pay S$450 for every spring cleaning session using professional cleaners.

I know there are similar vacuum cleaners being sold in Manila for P40000.00. I’m just not sure if these are just simple dry/wet vacuum cleaners or if they also have the steam function.

Overall, I would say my iEcologi was a good buy but if you’re not too keen on keeping a clean sanitized house, you’re better off just renting an iEcologi (if there are ones for rent) whenever you feel like doing some spring cleaning.