Monday, November 10, 2008

Adventures in Floor Mopping

I picked up this little number at Goodwill the other day for $14.99. I put it to use for the first time today. Other than two scalded fingers, I'm calling the project a success.  I got it out to work on my kitchen floor, teracotta tile, which has a weird nasty film on it from eight years of lazy Mop & Glo cleaning versus real mopping.
The grody dirty tile looked like this BEFORE:
And like this AFTER. And by AFTER, I mean after two fucking hours on my hands and knees with the steamer and a brillo pad. Yes. Seriously.
And after TWO HOURS of steaming and scrubbing, I had cleaned about, oh, nine tiles. Yes, about nine of them. But those nine? They look really good. Here's the little picture, the little picture of the mostly clean tiles.
Unfortunately, this is the big picture, the big picture of all of the rest of the tiles that did not get scrubbed individually. Because when the steamer ran out of steam? Yeah, so did I.
And that's when I got this guy out, and finished the kitchen off with a quick once over. Followed by a quick once over of the living room and dining room too.

LESSONS I LEARNED WHILE MOPPING THE KITCHEN FLOOR TODAY:

Steam is hot, even if it doesn't look that hot. And the nozzle that is spewing steam? Yeah, don't touch that.

My housekeeping bar? It's set really, really low. Like, so low we should be relegated to living in a hut with mud floors.

Mindless work is good for you, on occasion. Like an occasion when you really want to avoid doing your other work that requires you to use your mind. 

But day in and day out? Yeah, this is why God invented Molly Maids. Thank you, God, for Molly Maids. I apologize for the maid's child who will be going without shoes because I cleaned my own floor, and I promise to never upset the universe in that manner ever, ever again. Amen.

3 comments:

bernthis said...

I recently fired my housekeeper b/c 1. she was much into cleaning and
2. I've lost 25 percent of the value of all my investments.

I know your pain re: the tiles. I have mostly wood floors in my home and when it comes to polishing them....oh my God, it's neeeevvvver eeeennnndddiiingg

Rogue Scholar said...

Ok.... flooring person here to help you out. You can't steam clean grout. Get some sulfamic acid from your local Home Depot (it's sold in the flooring department). Then once it's clean, SEAL THE GROUT!!

I would love to have housekeeper. Unfortuntely mine works a full time job, has two children, and cleaning is very low on the prority scale. She has good intentions, just not good follow through.

What can I say... I'd rather be curled up on the couch watching TV :)

~~Eryn

Keetha said...

I'm the worst housekeeper I know. I want my house clean, I just don't want to have to do it.