New Year’s Resolution number one this year for me was to keep my house cleaner. I figured this would be easier to keep than losing weight and at least my husband might get some benefit if the house was cleaner.
I really mean to keep this resolution, but I haven’t been able to resist looking for some shortcuts that would help with the cleaning. I have done more research on these shortcuts than I have spent time cleaning house since January 1, and I must confess, the shortcuts I have tried have not turned out that well.
Let’s take the smell issue. I read that your house will appear cleaner if you have a pleasant smell, such as a scented candle can give you.
I invested in a great many scented candles and lit them throughout the house. Then I sat down to read my Facebook and found a charming article on how unhealthy scented candles are! Add to that the fact that my husband couldn’t tell me how great the house looked because he was too busy sneezing from the candles! Exit a lot of scented candles!
I still went with the smell theory, however. Rooms like the bathroom will have a cleaner appearance if you pour just a small amount of cleaning fluid in the corner…preferably by the toilet. I used bleach, which watered my eyes and ruined the paint on the wall where it splashed. As for the other suggestion..that baking cookies enhance the look of a house by presenting a beautiful smell? I burned the cookies. The house looks a lot less clean through a haze of smoke and an acrid smell!
Your house will be cleaner, they say, if you spend 15 minutes every day picking up. People with children or pets know that this is a joke. While you are picking up for your 15 minutes, they are making messes which will take hours to undo. When they get old enough to help, children will find their own way of using the cleaning time and as for pets…well, they never quite get the hang of sweeping a floor and they leave enough fur to open their own coat factory!
Always keep a mat in your bathtub, the experts advise. That way, you can pour cleaners in the tub and it will, again, smell better and when the mat gets too bad, you can simply remove the mat and put in a new one. If only the same could be said for the toilet! And as for the soap scum on the shower walls, even a squeegee application after each shower (which is recommended) does not keep those walls from looking as though there is a permanent fog in there!
I know that there are ways in which I could keep my resolution for a cleaner house. One of those involves dynamite and a pay loader. The other involves hiring a cleaner. And I’m not sure after the cleaner took one look at the place, that she/he wouldn’t recommend the payloader and the dynamite. Good luck with your New Year’s resolutions…and your cleaning!
© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
dropsinthewell 