"How clean is your house?"

I am officially a fan of those two old gals with the fake fur trimmed rubber gloves.

I have patches of ground in dirt on my kitchen tile where I do the most standing. Warm water with just a few drops of dishwashing liquid and then Borax sprinkled on the floor and used as an abrasive worked with minimal scrubbing to get them pristine.

The kitchen drain was running slow and I was loath to go to the market to get any of the packaged chemicals, so I used equal parts of salt and baking soda chased with cheap white vinegar. It rumbled and foamed and now is running like a newly installed set of pipes.

Their stuff works and most of it is incredibly cheap!

My place is still disorganized since I'm still drowning in paper, more of which comes in every day in the mail, but by golly, it's CLEAN.

Well, I wouldn't be ashamed to answer the door. But I clean some rooms regularly and some "as needed".

My kitchen floor is old now. It doesn't look bad and the glued down tiles were a good product so they've lasted. I keep one of those new fangled floor cleaning deals handy and it helps my lazy cleaning ways to have it.

What I like to do about once a year now that the floor is old is to rent one of those electric floor machines with the round scrubbers for a deep cleaning. My kitchen is large and there's a rental place very near here. The floor tiles have the little grooves design all over that collect dirt and it won't come out without a hands and knees cleaning. But those electric scrubbers make the old floor a beauty. I'll use your tip of dish soap + Borax when I get the scrubber this summer.

I like that baking soda/vinegar combo for the drains. It does work very well. When I make spaghetti I dump the boiling water down the kitchen drain right away to take advantage of the hot water. It's just not good for Corian sinks. A friend of mine cracked her Corian sink with the hot pasta water.

I keep a large, cheap plastic bag near the back door. We toss all the junk mail in there along with other recyclables. Once a week, when I get out to the market I drop off the contents in the Shriners recycle bin. Finding that bin just 4 blocks from here has been a godsend. Now my dining room table is clear of junk mail - more room for clean laundry waiting to be folded. :D

and as you note, they really do work! They're environmentally friendly, powerful enough to do the job, and you don't have to wear a gas mask to use them.

However I have a difficult time watching many of their shows. The filth that some people live in - holy crap - it gives me an increased appreciation for what the human immune system can handle! And the thing is, they can't stage that stuff. It is 100% real - the grime and gunk and putrid things they uncover can ONLY be created by the 10+ years of failing to do even minimal cleaning.

The part that grosses me out the most is at the very beginning of each show, when Kim & Aggie are in there TOUCHING WITH THEIR BARE HANDS the caked-on shit and hair and bugs and EWWWWW. Aieeee!

and didn't really get the "clean house" thing in a meaningful way. One weekend I was at his place and we were gonna fix a real dinner (chopping, cooking, stovetop and oven work) and I had to spend TWO HOURS cleaning the entire kitchen of old grease and dirt and spills and accumulated packrat crap that doesn't belong in a kitchen but was covering all the counters before I was willing to work on dinner. It was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. Oy, the GREASE!!

I personally keep a very tidy home, and while the cleaning sometimes gets put off, never in a million years would it be possible for my home to get that dirty in the first place. I don't MAKE messes - working in a microbiology lab in college taught me to keep a clean, tidy workspace as I went along and not leave crap to clean up "later".

(full-time fur machine) passed away. She had long fur and even though I've only been in this place 6 months, it's full of it. SPRING CLEANING time.

I just discovered I have no more vacuum cleaner bags and since my vacuum is 9 years old I don't even know if I can GET the bags for it......sigh. But I remembered an old trick. I took the VERY full bag out, opened one end, dumped the hairy dusty contents into the trash, and then double-folded the end and stapled it shut. I think I got this from Amy Dacyzyn's Tightwad Gazette years ago.

Most of my cleaning is with homemade concoctions, as natural as possible. Vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, lemon juice, baking soda, plain old-fashioned elbow grease......very judicious use of bleach and ammonia (not together, lol). But I do have some commercial cleaners that I am using up.

My Tansy is getting old, and I dread the day that she goes.

it is not so perfect that the cat toys have to be constantly picked up

or

used coffee cups on my computer desk gives me fits

or

I can't put the dust rag down and sit with my neighbor Julie for an hour or so drinkinhg coffee and solve the worlds problems.

my books are scattered everywhere, but my bed sheets are fresh.

The kitchen floor could use a once over with the mop and I just might do that in the next few days, but i am not stressing over it .

I would rather fiddle around in the yard

The boy child has moved!!! Yes it's just me the dog, cat, mice and fish tanks, and after this weekend I will be down to just me the cat and one fish tank plus an empty room and half a basement back. Can you tell I am not suffering empty nest syndrome. I can not state enough how great it is to come home and find it in the same condition I left it in, also I still have ice cream in my freezer, it's been a week, and it's still their, I open up the freezer every day and stare in wonder at the ice cream that is still their.

just one warning though, my boy child came back home at 40 after his divorce. Fortunately he is re-married to a wonderful no- nonsense girl and I am always happy to see him (them) when they visit with their yellow lab puppy (a paws for the cause dog) My two cats aren't so happy about it though LOL