How Clean Is Your House?

This is my new favorite show. I do not consider myself a clean fanatic by any stretch of the imagination. Heloise (or at least the people who write into her with new hints) and the Fly Ladies scare me, quite frankly. I mean, there's a thing called "obsessive compulsive disorder" and I think that most Fly Ladies should look into treatment. Really, I do! I have loads of clutter and stuff that needs to just get toted out to the car or the curb so it can live elsewhere, but every time I watch this show, I am reminded that I am hell and gone from the state of the homes that Kim and Aggie invade. It's sort of reaffirming for me, really.

I've also gotten some really good, inexpensive cleaning tips and tricks from the show. After all, if they work on the hog pens shown on TV, my little bits of dust and dirt are a breeze! I was skeptical that some olive oil mixed with plain old bottled lemon juice right from the fridge would remove the waxy buildup on that antique table from Grandma, especially when I'd spent good money on stuff that promised to do the same with no effect. Imagine my surprise when I tested the olive oil/lemon juice on the spot under the lamp mat for the table lamp and got a shiny table top that looked brand spankin' new! Imagine the utter shock I got when that mixture of regular table salt and the same lemon juice took the bits of cooking gunk that had accumulated under the rings on the electric stove right off with just a little effortless scrubbing with a nylon scrubber when even 409 and lots of sweating had failed. I also have started mixing plain ol' baking soda and Purex laundry soap with bleach into a paste that is apparently a homemade version of Soft Scrub for mere pennies when compared to the real deal. I put it on the tub and the tiles and it takes any soap scum right off and I think it is even bleaching out the grout on the tiles! These are all things I saw on "How Clean Is Your House?"

Of course, I was telling a friend recently that once you really and truly start deep cleaning and keeping it up, it is like dominoes, and before you know it, you're pulling out the refrigerator and cleaning under there! Because once you move the fridge even slightly and get a glimpse of what is lurking back there and under there, the genie is definitely OUT of the bottle, and you will not sleep until you've cleaned it properly! Which means that you then have to contemplate cleaning the INSIDE of the fridge, too. Yeah, yeah, I know. See above references to OCD, right? Well, I am comforted by the fact that, having cleaned out Dad's refrigerator not that long ago, I will not be confronting a 3 year old maple syrup spill that has been allowed to drip everywhere inside the refrigerator. Who knows? Maybe I'll thin things out and get down to have just six or seven kinds of mustard in my refrigerator!

Tomorrow I think I will clear the clutter from my room and the living room so that I can give it all a good dusting and vacuuming. I've got to do it early, though, as I have to start prepping for my baseline colonoscopy tomorrow afternoon. I am getting the scoping on Monday a.m. at 8:30. Everyone says the prep is worse than the actual test, and I believe they are probably right. Heck, these days you get enough happy juice to make you forget they've even done the colonoscopy from what I've heard. And I've taken Dad to enough scopings to have a pretty good idea how things go. I should be ready to eat my friend Meg's car upholstery by the time all is said and done sometime late morning/early afternoon on Monday! Then I can come home and take a nap! Or maybe that napping thing is just a Dad/Dogzilla thing? I guess I'll find out. At any rate, I'll be clean inside and out!