Monday, August 24, 2009

Nesting Does NOT Come Naturally

*** Two posts in one day? I know, I know. This one was a completely unplanned post, but I have to be honest in my stupidity today. I can only laugh out loud about what I've done because if I don't, I'll cry. ***

Cleanliness and organization does not just happen for me. I get up each morning, look at my "To Do" list and set out trying to get our house under control. If I don't have a list, things don't get done. I have a need to highlight and mark things off and cleaning is not fun for me if there isn't a list to mark on. I've been known to add TO my list just to have something to mark off.

Not that our house is out of control. I like things to be picked up, clean, and organized. That being said, I have often thought that when I walk into a room, things fall off of shelves because when I turn to leave (often just a few minutes later) it looks like a tornado has hit. I'm not sure how it happens. I've gotten better.

My poor mama has had to endure my clutter for as long as I've been alive. One of these days I'm going to find a picture of my bedroom and post it on here, because unless you've seen it, you just can't understand. I mentioned the other day that I wasn't allowed to have a birthday party one year because my room wasn't clean. I wasn't exaggerating. That being said, I've also always had cleaning ADD. I'll have good intentions to start on something and then get distracting by something that I find. Thus, the list.

However, I'm strange in that when I organize, I go ALL out. In high school, I would do my math homework and then re-copy it on a clean piece of paper so that all of my work was shown in a neat manner. It was a strange obsession. Students who don't keep their notebooks in an organized fashion drive me up the wall. I actually had lists of how my kids' notebooks should be kept last year and I gave them a grade for it. It wasn't a bad idea because they weren't allowed to throw anything out. Ninth graders have no concept of organization.

All of this is to say that cleaning around here just doesn't come to me. I'm not someone who sees a mess or clutter and thinks "You know, I'll just very quickly clean that up." Quickly isn't in my cleaning vocabulary. So every Monday I have a list that tells me what I need to do, and that usually includes things like: wash sheets, make bed, pick up, wipe counters in kitchen, load/unload dishwasher, etc. It has to be specific. It will take me all day to complete said list because I get distracted and wind up cleaning other things, or reading, or looking at the internet.

Today on my list was "Clean jets in bathtub." Now. The bathtub in our bedroom was obviously put there just for looks (and to kill me when I try to clean it). I have taken probably three baths in there since we've lived here. I am not a bath person. I feel dirtier when I get out and then I feel hot and yucky and like I need to take a shower. It just doesn't get used often. But because my back has been bothering me lately, I've felt the need to soak for a few minutes in the evening. Which means that the tub needs to be cleaned.

Eddie uses the tub to cut his hair once a week. He assures me that he cleans the tub out. I think by "cleaning" he means that he rinses his hair down the drain. So anytime I notice that it's looking a little dusty around the sides I set to work with a sponge and some cleaner. Since I'm not a fast cleaner, this takes a while. And now that I'm pregnant it takes even longer because my belly is enormous.

Today, however, I decided that I needed to clean, not just the tub, but the jets. I googled "How to clean a jacuzzi tub" and came up with a recipe that was a sure-fire way to clean them. Fantastic. The recipe?

Fill tub with HOT water.
While water is running, add 1 cup of bleach and 1/8 of a cup of liquid soap.
Run jets 15 minutes.
Empty.
Refill tub with COLD water.
Run jets 15 minutes.
Empty.
Clean tub as normal.

Y'all.

1/8 of a cup of liquid soap produces millions and billions of bubbles. I cannot even begin to explain. I wish I'd taken a picture.

I ran the jets with the hot water, bleach, soap mixture for almost 15 minutes. I turned the jets off at 12:30 (I looked at the clock and know the exact time...you'll see why I'm glad in a minute) and let the tub drain. While it was draining, I went to eat my lunch. As soon as I finished, I went back into the bathroom and wondered if the drain was clogged. Why? Because the bubbles were STILL ABOVE THE RIM OF THE TUB.

What in the world am I supposed to do? I started running cold water, thinking that it might melt some of the bubbles. When that didn't work, I went and got a cup from the kitchen and began throwing cold water on the bubbles. Twenty minutes later the bubbles had not gone below the rim of the tub.

What should I do???

I let the bubbles sit while I went to work on a few other things on my list, thinking they might just melt on their own. No such luck. I googled "How to get rid of bubbles." It mentioned that salt melts bubbles. I grabbed the salt shaker and went to town. This works, but it takes LOTS of salt to dissolve that many bubbles. I shook and shook until I needed a break.

More work on the rest of the list.

I decided to get out the big guns. I grabbed the BOX of salt from the cabinet and went to town. That thing was half full when I started shaking. It is now in the bottom of my trashcan and "salt" has been written on my grocery list. I drained the tub again and refilled it with cold water. The next solution was another stupid mistake.

I decided to run the jets again, thinking that cold water would dissolve the bubbles. NO IT WON'T!

More bubbles.

So what did I do? I recalled from childhood that when you're playing in a bath full of bubbles (since I'm allergic to them, this was not often for me), the bubbles begin to go away after lots of splashing and when the water gets cold. Since the water was already cold, I grabbed my mop bucket and started trying to "drown" the bubbles. This seemed to work. I poured until my back couldn't take it anymore and decided to let them sit.

It is now two hours and fifteen minutes after I started this process. There are STILL bubbles in the tub, but not many. This tub had BETTER be clean after all of this. I will NEVER AGAIN use this method for cleaning the jets. Bleach will be plenty.

Feel free to laugh at me. I'm sitting here laughing at myself.

1 comment:

Anna Catherine said...

Oh My Gosh! hahah! Do you remember the time Sonny decided to run the dishwasher at his office and instead of putting in the dishwasher powder he used the liquid soap! haha! His office made so much fun of him and they gave him a Barbie kitchen to practice with for the next time he decided to do any cleaning!
Sounds like you back hurt worse after you took a bath and cleaned the tub! Maybe you could talk Eddie into getting you a maid for safety reasons!