Pig decided he was going to take the kidlets to a movie today. This worked wonderfully for me, since I had a lot of work to do to get ready for our Open House next weekend. It is much easier to do those tasks without the kidlets home. It strikes me as more than slightly amusing how it takes at least double the necessary amount of time to clean something with each kidlet "helper" that is added to the mix.
My one goal for today was to take care of all windows and mirrors in the house so that I could get that particular cleaning chemical done all at once. A friend of mine learned the hard way that mixing cleaning products, even in small quantities, is a Very Bad Idea. As she put it, her [toilet] bowl was smoking. I am of the opinion that I do not wish to have smoking toilets. Nowhere in any of the guides for selling one's house does it imply that smoking porcelain makes the house seem like a good investment for a potential buyer. Therefore, my goal is to use only one cleaning product on any given day. Today was the glass cleaner.
I got out my step stool, paper towels, gloves, scraper, and garbage can. I figured I would start in Pig Jr.'s room so his room had the longest time to air out. I did not wish to give my resident wheezer any cause for complaint. I cleaned one of his two windows and then paused. His air conditioner was in the other window and I realized I had to take down the gray duct tape I had put up as a seal around it and put up the more Realtor-friendly white duct tape. The white blends in better with the window and does not make it scream, "These idiots used duct tape to seal around their air conditioners!" Down came the gray tape. I cleaned the window while it was tapeless, then put up the new duct tape. Pig Jr.'s windows were then done.
I moved into my bedroom to work on those two windows before I remembered I wanted to box up some of the kitchen items under my wall oven. I needed to do that before the kidlets came home, lest they decide to play with the food processor, which also makes my Very Bad Idea list. I assembled a cardboard box and put those several items in it. Then I cleaned the bottom of that cabinet, since everything was already taken out of it. While the cabinet was drying, I ran back in to scrape sloppy paint off one of the windows in my room.
Next, I switched the laundry so that I could make up Pig Jr.'s bed with his brand-new bedspread and blanket. (His new blanket is incredibly fuzzy. I have never felt a softer blanket in my life, including all of the baby blankets we had when the kidlets were little. I want a fuzzy blanket like that one.) While in the basement switching laundry around, I attempted to straighten a few things here and there. The basement is mostly empty these days, but what is there looks like a bomb went off in it. After a few minutes of not really organizing anything, I went back upstairs to clean the scraped window in my room. Mid-window, I realized I had forgotten to clean Pig Jr.'s mirror, so back I went into his room.
After cleaning Pig Jr.'s mirror, I figured I had better clean mine before I forgot again. Somehow I remembered I had not put everything back under the oven yet, so I dashed back to the kitchen to take care of at least that one cabinet. Unfortunately, I had to clean off a number of the appliances so they would not be showcasing the "spattered-with-food" look, which reminded me to take a peek into the actual oven. I dropped what I was doing to add oven cleaner to my shopping list.
By then, I resolved to finish cleaning the windows in my room or die trying. I stripped the curtains and dragged them downstairs to the almost done washing machine so I could throw them in with the next load. Rather than go back to scrubbing, I killed time pretending to straighten in the basement again. Finally, I switched the laundry, ran back upstairs to finish with the glass cleaner in my room, then jumped over to the kitchen to put the now-dry appliances back under the wall oven.
I collapsed at my laptop, which had been sitting out on the kitchen table during my distractible cleaning binge, and drank some water while I puttered around on my favorite online game for a moment. This was the point the family walked back in the door. Four people now think I did absolutely nothing other than play online while they were at their movie. At least the two rooms with clean windows are ones that are not accessible to kidlet fingerprints. For now, I need to leave the rest of the windows unwashed and hope that I can somehow bop from task to task tomorrow while finding a way to include glass cleaner with my daily goals. Presuming I can, I just have to hope it will not involve making the windows smoke.
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