So, what kind of spring cleaner are you?

[InsaneCdn]

@Cedar... if things are getting a blackness to them... well, OK, so I don't live in a really humid climate, but...

Mold and mildew are serious health threats. Here, basements tend to get damp, and the only way to avoid mold and mildew is with dehumidifiers. But that presumes that the house is fairly air-tight. In a humid climate and a non-airtight house, the dehumidifier would just run all the time without making a difference.

Here, a house with mold or mildew - anything more than on tile grout in washroom or laundry - is deemed a health hazard and must be fixed or house not inhabitable. And we're not talking Tilex... more like "replace drywall".

 

[pasajes4]

From top to bottom and back again.

 

[Lil]

Now that the house is not new anymore, things are getting a blackness to them, and it is an ugly thing to see and I think it might be mildew.

So thank you for the information about the Tilex.

I have allergic asthma, and cannot clean with bleach.

I believe Tilex is a bleach-based cleaner. It's made by Clorox.

White vinegar is a wonderful natural cleaner and inhibits mold and mildew. Try scrubbing with that. It doesn't smell great, but the smell does dissipate when it dries.

 

[Lil]

Here's my problem with spring cleaning:

It's 9:25 on Monday. I've had breakfast. I've had coffee. I'm showered and dressed and ready. I could wash windows now. I could clean bathrooms. I could organize! I have ambition to do stuff!

I'm at the office.

By the time I go home at 5:00 - I don't want to work anymore...if I get to stay home at all. Several days a week, we work our second job where, ironically, we clean.

Saturdays, we tend to sleep in a bit because it's our only day to do so, but even then at some point (usually when I'm just to the point of feeling ambitious) we go work doing the final cleaning before church. Sundays...well, there's actual church, followed by other church-related activities and even a quick clean-up results in our being out until at least 1 and if we do anything crazy like go out to lunch or shop for groceries...even later. We generally get dinner cooked and laundry done. That's about it for Sundays.

So there you have it. Work all week. Work all weekend. No time for serious cleaning...regardless of the season.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Oh, I meant outside things. Like, the posts on the porch, and the table and chairs on the lanai. There is a fine, black dirt or something that does not wash off without really scrubbing it. That must be mildew, then.

Everything outside, really.

It's the strangest thing. If it is mildew (and that is what it must be) you would think the sun would kill it, but it doesn't.

I am going to try the Tilex on one of those posts, and on the other white trim.

I will post back about whether it worked.

I think that is why they use so much wicker down here. I don't see any mildew on that. The cushions? Yep. I washed those in the washing machine with bleach. They came out pretty well, but there is still a shadow where the blackness was around the edges of the cushions.

Ew.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

So there you have it. Work all week. Work all weekend. No time for serious cleaning...regardless of the season.

How did that old saying go? Something about clean enough to be healthy and happy enough to be home?

When I have been working alot of days in a row?

I don't do anything for like, two days.

Nothing.

husband does nothing every day, as a matter of principle.

:O)

True.

We are going to paint the porch soon, except for D H.

The other day, we were going to wash the cars, except for D H. Then I ran out of time because I fool around with the deep cleaning part of things too much, and we went to dinner instead.

We did (together, actually) change my windshield wiper fluid. So, though my car was still dirty when I left the next day, I squirted the windshield clean so I could see, and took off in it just as it was because, as D H reminds me..."It'll just get dirty again, anyway."

He really is so funny. The only reason he felt guilty enough to be out in the driveway when I was going to wash my car in the first place is because he was sitting on the lanai just sitting.

That man enjoys himself too much.

Here is another D H story. We have something (invented by D H) called the 75% rule at our house.

That is the degree of cleanliness when D H does the dishes.

I am serious.

Cedar

 

[Lil]

There is a fine, black dirt or something that does not wash off without really scrubbing it. That must be mildew, then.

Yep...definitely mildew. To my knowledge, bleach is the only sure-fire cleaner for mildew. Tilex is bleach-based and should work.

We have something (invented by D H) called the 75% rule at our house.

That is the degree of cleanliness when D H does the dishes.

I can honestly say, Jabber does as much around the house as I do. Maybe more. Like 55/45. Or maybe even 60/40 (sometimes).

I do think the dirt bothers me more.

He really doesn't do bathrooms...but then again neither do I until I can't stand it anymore.

 

[InsaneCdn]

If it's outdoor trim, there are paints you can buy that inhibit mildew - after you get it cleaned up first. Which should in theory reduce how much you have to do later. IF... you don't mind painting trim.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Ha! Lil, D H does not do bathrooms, either. The 75% rule goes like this:

"I want to help with the dishes." (D H helps with the dishes and the cooking whether I want him to or not. He will not do these things alone as a matter of course, but he does like to do cooking and dishes together with me as he sees it. What I see, of course, is a man in my kitchen, standing forever in just the place I need to be or hogging the dishcloth or dripping across the kitchen floor.)

I know! What an ingrate, right?!?

This unfortunate rule holds true for when we are having people over for dinner, too. There is not one cook, there are two cooks and neither of us knows who has seasoned what with what or how much. When I tell D H to go ahead and make the company dinner so one of us is responsible for whatever it is we are cooking (and I will say D H is the better cook ~ it's the Italian in him) he loses interest. My D H is an Italian male. He likes to be in the kitchen, but mostly for the fun of smelling and watching things brown and showing off when dinner is good.

He tends to take it way seriously when dinner is bad.

Especially if he has cooked a bad dinner.

It's like, how that could happen is the topic of dinner conversation that night.

Anyway, the 75% rule goes like this:

"But I want to help with the dishes! It's not fair for you to have to do all the work alone."

Then, D H happily scrubs away at something until he feels done with it. Whether the item is actually clean or not is not relevant, here.

Whether the item is clean, whether the floor he swept no longer has dirt on it or the item he has again refrigerated should have been thrown out a week ago ~ none of that is the relevant thing.

The thing that matters in any of this, to my D H, is that we did the job together.

Oh for Heaven's sake!!!

One time? We were preparing to leave for the Winter. It was last minute stuff and everything was crazy and I asked D H to sweep the dining room floor. This is a tile floor, right? So, D H swept the floor. When I got around to that part of the house, I thought D H had not had a chance to sweep the floor, so I began to sweep it.

husband: "But I swept the floor."

Me: "But it's not clean."

D H "But I swept the floor."

Me: "But...it's not clean."

My D H seems to feel that if he has swept a thing or washed a thing or made an attempt at pulling up the covers on the bed, he has gone above and beyond the call of duty in the marital arena. He is utterly happy with himself and with me and with the world in general, knowing he has done his part whether his part is done well, or not.

Thus, the 75% rule.

75% done is done enough.

Cedar

I have just taken to cleaning the kitchen in the morning. If we have a fire or something in the night, no one is going to notice that the dishes are stacked, the pans sort of half-washed and left to drain dry, and the stove has not been cleaned. The cabinet tops will be streaked, and food that should have been tossed will have been refrigerated in the bowl it was served in.

That is why I love my D H.

Things like the 75% rule.

Life is good.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Here is a D H bathroom story.

So, I had gone to visit the kids or something, and was gone for two weeks or a month or whatever it was. husband was home alone with the dog and the cat. When I got back, I learned we had experienced a tomato sauce can blowout in the kitchen, which was bad enough. But it also turned out that D H had learned, much to his chagrin, that he was messy in the bathroom.

All these years, and we had been married like, thirty years at the time this revelation occurred to my D H, my own husband believed the toothpaste spots on the mirror were mine, or belonged to one of the kids. Though he never spoke of it, my D H could not imagine the fervor we must be employing simply to brush our teeth.

Why we did not bother to clean the mirror, D H would wonder, as he completed brushing his own teeth never once suspecting he was the source of the toothpaste dots now on the mirror, was beyond him.

During this visit?

D H saw indisputable evidence of his own apparent tooth-brushing fervor on the bathroom mirror though I was nowhere in sight.

Note I did not say my D H cleaned the mirror. It was like he had watched in horror as the toothpaste spots collected daily and in the evening too, on the mirror, knowing full well he was the one doing it.

That was D H's first experience with the messiness of life as it relates to him. I had always cleaned the mirror (and the bathroom) every day, as many times a day as it needed it. (Mom at home, right?)

Prior to living with me, D H had an Italian mother.

He firmly believed that any mess he saw had been created by some less than cleanly character fortunate enough to live with D H anyway.

That would be me.

75% rule.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Confused]

I try( try lol ) to keep it up all year, ( no attic or basement) except for the window screens and air vents, which is done when we turn the heat off. Oh also need to paint this year!

 

[Kathy813]

Okay, I will confess. I am the type of spring cleaner that pays someone else to do it. Our regular housekeeper charges us double the usual price and does a deep cleaning each fall and spring. We are on her schedule for the end of the month.

Hey . . . I am helping out the economy.

~Kathy

 

[InsaneCdn]

Kathy... if we had the money, I'd do the same. I like it being clean. I just don't have the mental or physical energy at this point to tackle it.

 

[Lil]

Oh! To HIRE other people to clean for us! How amazing would that be?

We tend to clean when other people are coming. I cleaned the main bathroom the other day...because we have a contractor who just lets himself in (occasionally ) to work (occasionally ) - seriously, he's been on this job for months, but it's a flat rate, so...whatever - and anyway I became concerned he might have to come upstairs to use the bathroom at some point and it was horrifying. So bathroom got cleaned.

I remember one time cleaning before my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law arrived for some reason - maybe packing up Xmas candy - and they promptly started cleaning my house. I just cleaned it!!!

We need to be more social. Maybe then we'd clean.