Wednesday, September 05, 2007

You cannot eat off my floors

Perhaps the most pathetic thing about the state of my floors is that I desperately want to blog about it every single time I clean them. I don't mean every time I sweep the hardwoods or vacuum the carpets, which I do perhaps every week or two, depending on my tolerance for disgusting and the amount of cat hair and kitty litter tracked around. Rather, I mean that I want to blog about it every time I mop the floors. It is that much of an event in my life.

This urge is clearly so pathetic that I manage to restrain myself most of the time-- which amounts to the perhaps 2 other times this calendar year that I have had this urge. I think that's about it, though I honestly cannot recall the last time I did the task, so I can't be entirely sure.

I do sweep the kitchen pretty often, and I try to clean up spills as they happen (if of course I am present when they happen, which is not always the case). When I spill water, especially, I can be counted on to grab the dish drying towel to sop it up, then I will use the wet dishtowel to make a general swipe at any particularly repulsive areas, especially anything sticky. I think that this forestalls the need to actually mop, which is obviously delusional to anyone with actual standards about such things, but for the genuinely slovenly it works well enough.

For the bathroom, I sweep the kitty litter almost daily. There is a dust pan and brush in there for just that purpose. With the bathroom approximately the size of a very small broom closet and a small child and a small sink from which it is remarkably easy to spill water, well, the kitty litter simply cannot sit on the floor, ever, because it is mostly under the small overflow-prone sink. Let the clumping kitty litter get wet and it becomes an aggregation of concrete on the floor, and then it's just work work work.

However, I am imperfect, and no one else in the house seems to be capable of using the dustpan in the bathroom. The elves refuse to help (though I suspect that the rest of the family believe that they are the main sweepers of all the floors, really). Add to this that there appears to be a leak somewhere between the shower/ toilet/ wall containing the plumbing that feeds them both. This leak seems to get better and worse fairly randomly, which is disturbing in and of itself, and when it is particularly bad, the kitty litter ends out soaked and clumped onto the floor and the situation becomes intolerable.

At least to me.

Everyone else in the house seems fully able to ignore it, frankly. The elves refuse to clean, and I have not yet proved able to see what it takes to wait out my spouse or daughter on this one. Even I cannot manage that, and if you have not already figured this out, my standards are lower than those of perhaps everyone you know except for any people you know who live in fraternity houses.

So today was a banner day: both the bathroom and kitchen floors got cleaned. Swept, mopped, scrubbed, relieved of at least the topmost layer of disgusting crap that covers them.

I would not recommend eating off my floors, even now, but at least I think no one will call the health department on arrival in our home. Sad but true, but this is the best my housekeeping can hope for.

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