Spring Cleaning

My mother was big on spring cleaning.  Turn the mattresses, drag the braided area rugs out to the clothesline and beat them with some kind of ancient wire rug beater contraption, air the feather pillows, wash windows with vinegar, dry with crumpled newspapers, wash the curtains, starch and iron them, to name just a few things.  The woman would get wound up and there was no stopping her.  No wonder I’ve never been a fan.

Hubby has built several homes over the years, so that was always a great solution to spring cleaning, just move to a new house.  But now that we’ve settled into the condo, it’s been seven years now, and it’s pretty easy breezy to take care of, except for the grout in my stone floors.  There’s always “something” to make life a bitch, isn’t there?  And those floors that I just had to have because they were made of tumbled limestone with uneven edges and wide grout that looked so wonderful when they were installed have turned into a nightmare.  Not everywhere, just in the kitchen and the utility room where they get a lot of traffic.  Oh, and under my computer desk in the sunroom.  You can imagine how they look underneath where I live my life most days.

The grout is almond color, so that makes the upkeep harder, and it was sealed a couple of times when it was installed, but over the years those areas have turned darker, and because the edges are uneven, we have much wider grout lines than regular installed tile, and it’s a royal pain in the patootie.  The solution has been for poor LC to get down on his hands and knees with some nasty smelling caustic cleaner and scrub it with a brush.  Not a fun job, trust me.

We’ve been watching infomercials about steam cleaners, my cleaning lady, Krista, bought one to try, but it was flimsy, and didn’t work that well, so she returned it.  So I started Googling, found out a lot about them, people prefer the canister cleaners to the mop ones, and say that the hand held ones don’t work that well, so we bought a highly rated, McCulloch MC-1275 from Amazon last week.  And that’s another story, that Amazon, aren’t they they awesome?  I buy things from them, and have them in two days, free shipping, no schlepping through the stores, and the best prices anywhere! I’m a bonified Amazon groupie, as I imagine many of you are, too.

But back to my story.  The cleaner arrives, hubby fires it up this morning, it has a long handle, no stooping over, a scrub brush on the end, it runs for up to 30 minutes before you have to refill the tank, and let me tell you, this thing will rock your world!  OMG, the dark tile turned immediately back to almond, with practically no effort.  None!!!  All you do is stand there and hold the thing and it does the work.  Wow, the possibilities are endless.  It will blast dirt from the corners of your woodwork that you can’t get to, I’m going to clean my stainless faucet with it, I’m absolutely estatic.  Of course he’s the one using the thing, so that makes me even happier! ;0)

Sad, isn’t it, that at this age all you get worked up about is a steam cleaner…. 

But if you want to part with $100, give it a try, you will be so impressed.  It’s not that expensive, and it’s is a goodie!  Definitely money well spent, pinkie swear.

~ Jan