For me it's cleaning the bathrooms. It's my dirty little secret (ha ha ha) how much I hate cleaning bathrooms. I'm sure it's a holdover from my childhood when I responsible for cleaning the "kids" bath every Saturday before I could watch cartoons. Plagued by 2 brothers with bad aim, a sister with a penchant for bubble baths, hard water, and a very picky mother, I would procrastinate, cry, and try to bargain to get out of that chore. It didn't work. Every Saturday, armed with Comet and Lysol, I cleaned the bathroom.
I have tried everything to make the chore more enjoyable: I have a steamer that blasts steam, sprays steam, or mists steam. I like it, but it's noisy and has to be refilled a lot. I tried using all natural cleaners thinking that perhaps my smug "well aren't I just a Nobel-prize-winning-friend-of-Al-Gore-planet-saving-little-housewife?" attitude would make the chore more bearable. It didn't. I tried using the harshest-but-allegedly-fastest-working-chemicals on the market thinking if all I had to do was spray some toxins around and walk away that perhaps it would be worth sacrificing a little ozone. I don't know how well the ozone faired, but they didn't really work without scrubbing despite what the bottle says. I tried just swiping around with a Clorox wipe a couple of times a week thinking that if I didn't really clean then maybe I wouldn't feel like I was cleaning. After a few weeks of sticky sinks, toilet handles, and faucets I decided that the germs were just sticking to the Clorox residue and besides the guilt from creating all that waste was getting to me, so I stopped.
After living on my own for over 20 years I have finally found the two items necessary to make bathroom cleaning bearable: rubber gloves and my apron with the big center pocket.
It turns out that I'm not adverse to the cleaning part, it's touching what needs to be cleaned that grossed me out. I can clean anything if I just don't have to touch it with my bare hands. Also having spare rags, baking soda, vinegar, and borax (yes, I really am that 'out there') stuffed in my big center pocket means that I have all my supplies readily at hand. And I don't get burned from the steam as much. And my hands are no longer scary-dry and cracked.
Am I alone in this bathroom-touching-aversion? What do you do to make it bearable?
4 comments:
uh oh...I'm just the opposite. I love cleaning the bathroom. I do it everyday it is a feddish of mine. Gloves .....they get in the way of the crevices and cracks on the hinges etc etc. One superclean everyweek and a swish and swipe as the flylady says on flylady.net. Love your post.
HATE HATE HATE cleaning. Period. Gonna get gloves though. Simply because my hands dry out and then my cuticles crack and bleed. Ick.
Okay so if there are those of you who love cleaning bathrooms let me just put this out there: I love to paint, you love to clean. We need to chore swap!
I'll make a deal with you. I'll clean your bathrooms if you tackle my kitchen tile. Whoever invented ceramic tile was playing a cruel, cruel joke. The grout is a nightmare to clean.
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