Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Homemaking mishaps: toilet cleaning

Before I got married, I had never cleaned a toilet. That may be hard to believe, but it is true! My mother is the kind of lady you have to force to let you do anything in the house. I had made progress with dusting, cooking, shopping and other household tasks but never quite got to take over some of the toilet cleaning!

So, when I married I approached this task with a sense that it was somewhat difficult and complex. I soon discovered that it was neither.

However, there was a day when I made a big mistake. My husband likes dishes to be rinsed, and since we only have one sink we use a large plastic tub beside the sink. One day I decided it would be great to recycle this hot, clean water. Since I also had to clean the toilet, I thought "Why not use it for that?". After all, Dave and I kept talking about taking care of the environment by using less. So I dutifully carried the tub into the toilet and began to wipe down the seat. After a while, it suddenly occurred to me that using the same basin for dishes and toilet cleaning might not be a good idea.

Dave is very "germ aware" so he was horrified when I told him what I'd done. While I had spasms of laughter, he seemed genuinely shocked. I assured him that I'd immediately stopped as soon as I realised, subsequently cleaned the tub very carefully in hot water, and I'd never do the same thing again.

A day in the life of an inexperienced, vague homemaker.

2 comments:

  1. Eww!

    You might find this funny as well, then. . . In college my mom gave me gloves to protect my hands when washing dishes, as I get very dry skin and didn't have a dishwasher. Well, one day I saw my roommate cleaning the bathroom shower in pink rubber gloves. Oh no! I looked over at the sink (right next to the bathroom) and saw there were no gloves draped over the faucet neck. Sure enough, the gloves were back later when she was out of the bathroom. So I picked them off the faucet, stuck them in a plastic bag, and put them in the back of the cleaning closet. I never used them for dishes again or let them touch the faucet after that.

    Signed,
    Another "Germ Aware" Person

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  2. I think you were very wise to ut your gloves into the cleaning closet :). Gloves are much more difficult to wash thoroughly than tubs, and I did the same thing when I realised that some of our washing up gloves had gravitated to another part of the house (my fault again!)

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