Notice anything missing? No venting fan over the stove. See that corner bit of ceiling--over the cabinet, there? It is the hardest spot to reach.I just checked the blog--in Sept of 2007, I washed my kitchen ceiling. I checked to see how long ago it was because I just did it again, today.
I noticed how nasty it was when I was cleaning the trim over the kitchen cabinets prior to painting them last week. I wiped away at it--and then REALLY noticed a difference between where I'd just cleaned--and where I hadn't. I'd say it was about a year (or two) over due!
I also washed the hardwood floors in my dining room and downstairs hallways today, too. Clean Mama is doing a 31 day series on cleaning your house: and Thursdays, apparently, is the day to wash the hardwood floors. Yes, Thursdays. As in, every week.
Really?
I try to do my kitchen and bathroom floors once a week--the last time I washed the hardwood was sometime last Spring, during the self-imposed Spring Cure of 2011.
Doing Spring and Fall cures has meant that my house doesn't get overwhelmingly nasty (well, with the obvious exception of my kitchen ceiling) but it also perpetuates a cycle of bouts of intense take-it-all-out of me cleaning alternating with long stretches of inactivity and oblivion.
I'm hoping that this week will be different. I've been telling myself that these mad, crazy few days of cleaning and preparation for Thanksgiving are creating a "point of return"--I'm establishing a base-line, as it were. A memory of how things could be if I stay on top of them each week.
I hope so. I hope I'm not just setting myself up to crash and burn. Because these floors look amazing. I wouldn't mind if they looked this good every week.
The question I'm asking myself now is: What's it going to take to keep going?
Be glad you CAN wash your kitchen ceiling, even if only every few years. I have that dreadful stipply stuff on all my ceilings, and I can't do a thing with them. ICK!
ReplyDeleteFloor looks gorgeous. I have to admit whenever you start talking about your hardwood floors, I remember our very first cure, and all the work you did on the floors then, and I get scared you're going to announce you're going to do it all over again. Washing's fine!
How about every two weeks? Every four? Definitely don't want crash-and-burn happening, but the floor does look lovely.
Thanks! You know, I actually thought about "doing" the floors again--but the work I did back then didn't last.
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit inclined to think that the clean mama is bit of an overachiever, sorry clean mama, no offence. I live in a country where most people have hardwood floors and I never ever hear that people would wash their floors. They vacuum and perhaps occasionally, like before Xmas, they wipe the floors with a damp rag and that's it. They don't use any steam things and certainly don't rince floors after wiping.
ReplyDeleteAnd I have never thought that peoples' floors would be dirty. On the other hand here people never use shoes inside, don't know if that is the case in your home.
But still I would not stress about washing the floors.
Thanks Leena! Shoes are a big concern--I don't happen to have a proper pair of inside and outside shoes, unfortunately. I need to change that!
ReplyDeleteI love Clean Mama, but do agree that she spends waaay too much time cleaning things that don't need to be cleaned that often! I vacuum the carpeting every week, then use the vacuum on the "floor" setting every 3-4 weeks - whenever it needs it. I occasionally mop or swiffer it when necessary. Love your blog!
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