Dr. Clean

My dear husband was gone from Wednesday to Sunday this past week. He was in Louisville with his parents, because his dad was undergoing some cardiac procedure of some sort. Not open heart surgery, or anything particularly drastic, but it was enough that it warranted a trip Up North.

Home alone, I was pretty bored. After dinner on Friday night, I realized that I had better load that stack of dishes into the dishwasher before it took on a life of its own. So I did, and ran the dishwasher too, for good measure. Then I thought, well, there's this dish that we'd baked a ham in, and I should probably wash that. So I soaked it a little, and then scrubbed it clean. It didn't take long at all. Then I saw some other pots and pans that I could wash, so I washed them too. And I saw that there were some dirty baking stones that were just sitting there on the counter top, taking up space, so I washed those too.

The next thing I knew, all the dishes were clean. I was proud of my accomplishments, and I went to bed. The next morning, I emptied the dishwasher and the dish rack, putting everything I had washed away. And that was when I noticed that the stovetop and the counters were pretty filthy. So I scrubbed the countertops and the stove and the next thing I knew, they were looking pretty clean.

I went downstairs to do laundry (one of the perils of having a new size is that I have very few clothes that fit me) and noticed all the dirt and dust on the floor, so after starting the laundry, I searched for the broom and swept the downstairs. I swept all the dirt into piles and then sucked it up with the dust buster. (We don't have a vacuum cleaner because in our previous house my dad had installed a central vacuum, and we plan on talking him into installing one in this house too.) I continued my sweeping rampage by sweeping all the bathrooms, our bedroom, the hallway, the kitchen, and the dining room. And I took the dust buster to the carpeted stairs, one by one. I am a crazy so-and-so.

Since I was on such a cleaning rampage, I decided to keep up the good work by cleaning the shower in our bathroom, and mopping the floors of our bathroom and the kitchen. Then I decided to assemble my new sewing cart and spent the rest of the evening doing that.

The next morning, I decided to clean all the toilets and all the sinks. I found some toilet bowl cleaner, but we have only one bowl brush, so I had to take it around to each bathroom in turn. First I went to each bathroom and squeezed some cleaner into the toilet bowls, then I went and scrubbed the toilets in the same order. And I rotated through them one more time as I cleaned the sinks, ending my sink-cleaning rampage with none other than the kitchen sink.

Next I tackled a lot of clutter, putting old envelopes and junk mail into the recycling, and placing all the bills that are due in the right piles. By that time, Jeff arrived home, and I think he was surprised to find the house in better condition than he had left it.

It's not that I'm a slob (although, I definitely am) so much as the fact that I hate to clean. I don't know what got into me, and whatever it was, it will probably never get back in. But in any case, the house is pretty sparkly at the moment.

I'd like to take this time for a shout-out to my good buddy Mr. Clean, who makes some products that I like because they work without too much elbow grease, and because I can grip them. He makes a pretty good mop, although I wish the handle of it were just a little bit longer. Maybe I'm taller than his target clientele. But the best thing he makes are the Mr. Clean Magic Erasers, which you can use to clean just about anything. I used them on my sinks and they really worked wonders.