Cleaning Confessions

I have a confession to make. This will probably give my mom the shivers, like when I told her, after being married and cleaning my own bathrooms, that I realized that she had neglected to put "Clean flush handle" on the bathroom chore checklist and it never occurred to me that I should clean that part of the toilet at all. It was like it was invisible. One day as an adult I was cleaning our bathroom toilet and thought, "This handle is probably covered in germs and grossness, and I don't think I've ever cleaned the flush handle on any toilet I've ever cleaned." Sorry, Mom.

Back to the present. We have lived in our current house for 8+ years and I think I have mopped the kitchen floor... maybe 6 times. Let's be generous and call it 9 times - at least one for every year we've lived here. Maybe I've blocked some times out. We do own a real mop at least. I just do NOT like mopping. I do not like it, Sam I Am.

And before we had kids, the occasional spot-clean with a cloth was sufficient for most common spills and even muddy footprints. We sweep regularly and vacuum even more regularly.

It didn't occur to me until today that when I said one reason I wasn't too anxious to start Allison on real food because it was messy, that "messy" would translate into MOPPING! I always thought of sticky face and hands, dirty clothes and bibs, wiping down a high chair, picking or sweeping up cereal off the floor, but never until I looked at the floor today and saw watermelon juice and sweet potato smears scattered around the kitchen did mopping enter my mind. Ugh...

So today I mopped. It was the worst. The floor looks a bit better but not as much as you might think because we chose our tile very well. Not that it really matters because I'll probably be mopping again in a few days. I just know I'll come to love it. Someday. Probably when we don't need to do it anymore because our kids are grown and gone.