Hazard Duty

The morning started with Ben taking a shower and me trying to figure out what to do today.  It feels like there are just so many projects I didn't have the energy for during the last few months that I really should get done now, but today I wasn't sure where to start.  Should I organize the linen closet?  Sort through that last tub of clothes in our bedroom?  Put drawer paper in the cupboards?  Wash the cupboard doors with the cleaning solution I didn't want to use while I was pregnant?  Wash the bathrooms?

"This bathtub is filthy," Ben announced from the shower.  "We are really going to have to give it a scrubbing - what on earth causes pink stains on porcelain, anyway?"

"Mold," I said cheerfully.  Yes, I was cheerful: because Ben had rescued me from indecision.  He likes things clean, but he's pretty easygoing about it; and if he'd noticed the bathtub was in need of scrubbing, that meant it was getting pretty disreputable.  On closer inspection, I sort of wondered how I'd manage to overlook how bad it was getting.  Shows you how much my brain's been on stand-by lately.

Ben had an early day at work, so after I saw him off I finished up the dishes, made Grandma's bed, and got busy on the bathroom.

Now, we've been married three months and in that time, I don't think I've done a really good deep cleaning in the bathroom.  I've washed the floor and the toilet and the mirrors and the sinks, but usually at different times...and not like I washed them today.  It was one of those projects that once I got going, I kept seeing new things to clean.  Take the shower handles, for example: it's been so long since someone unscrewed them and cleaned the insides that they were absolutely full of sheets of mold and soap scum.  Yuck.  It was literally coming off in pieces like paper when I scrubbed it, and with something as small as a shower handle you really have to leave it a long time to get sheets of mold.  Dad Turner has been sending us a lot of reading material on biofilm because of a business venture he's interested in and after all that reading, I was eyeing that mold pretty dubiously.  (If you've never heard of biofilm, I would be extremely cautious Googling it.  Especially after a meal.  Just sayin'.) 

After the sheets of mold, there was all the dust and dirt buildup in the corners and around the toilet.  What exactly is the dusty stuff that always collects around the bases of toilets?  Is it really just dust?  Or something disgustingly more nefarious?  These are questions that always occur to me when I'm cleaning and they're probably not things to be speculated on when down on my hands and knees scrubbing whatever it is.  I usually comfort myself by repeating, "I'll just wash my hands when I'm done" but you have to admit, cleaning bathrooms really can feel like a hazardous job at times.

And I am truly amazed at the amount of my own hair I cleaned out of various corners.  I'm used to cleaning at my family's house, but I suppose I always harbored the comfortable illusion that quite a bit of the hair I was always getting rid of belonged to my sisters instead of me.  Ha.  There is pretty much no one but me losing long dark hairs around here, so I have no other culprits to blame; and my goodness!  I lose a lot of hair, apparently.

Two hours later, I had both bathrooms clean and was promising myself that they can't get that dirty again.  After all, cleaning the house really should never tempt me to go next door and borrow some of Dad's hazmat equipment.  The problem was that it just didn't seem all that dirty and I have this mistaken feeling that because there are just three of us, we aren't generating a whole lot of grime that needs scrubbing.  Hopefully I'll remember today's lesson long enough to keep up with the cleaning.

We'll see.