I made a purchase so unprecedented I’m not sure why my VISA card didn’t flag it. America, I bought a home carpet cleaner.
Cleaning is not something I’m known for. I have been known to tidy. In fact, I keep a few rooms fairly tidy most of the time. They will be festooned with cobwebs and the baseboards will have accumulated suspicious lint but the average near-sighted person coming to our door is likely to glance around and think grownups live here.
But any kind of deep-cleaning is not happening. My idea of a serious go at it is when I push the books into the bookcase, wipe down the front of the shelf, and inch them back out again. Once a decade. When our cat Tater started horking up hairballs the exact same shade as our living room rug, I thought: Good enough.
There are people who are super clean. I know some. I suspect them of being a little off-balance, because that puts my own dishevelry in a better light. I’m sure they get the willies coming to my house, and I’m mildly sorry about that.
However. My beloved rugs (downstairs) and wall-to-wall (upstairs) have gotten into a State.
Jack
We used to hire this cool man to steam clean our carpets about once a year. He was terrific. He retired as a mail carrier just about the time I came on board. And—in a departure from the standard-issue postal employee—he liked to be busy. So he got himself some equipment and hired himself out. Jack showed up with his big machines and hauled them into the house. Jack was about five foot nothing and always wore a sleeveless muscle shirt, muscles included. The man was built like a tank and he was ninety if he was a day. However, I haven’t called him in a long time and I’m afraid to now. If he’s no longer with us, I don’t want to know.
Anyway, I bought one online, and by the miracle that is modern commerce, the damn thing showed up on my porch the next day. I left it in its box in the living room for a week and ignored it nearly to the point of not noticing it was there, and then I slit ‘er open. Another miracle: there are about three parts and they snap together using only positioning and gravity. There was one screw (included). I had it all put together in five minutes.
I started upstairs and had gotten about 1/3rd of the way through our bedroom when I had to empty the reservoir, which was now full of mud. Mud, I say. Well, we can’t be arsed to take our shoes off at the door. When most people say they like to bring the outdoors inside, they mean they’re picking flowers and pulling the curtains. We’re tracking in dirt. If our rugs ever got wet, they might sprout geraniums.
I will say the machine is right spiffy and easy to use. And it’s a wonderful thing to see all that improvement. You’d think it would inspire me to clean more stuff. But I’ve known me for a long time. Our spiders have nothing to worry about.
Exactly why we don’t have carpeting. My mom had it throughout the house (except kitchen and bathroom.) When I renovated the house to suit us, after she died, I painted the walls in neutrals rather than the former pastels, and tore out the wall-to-wall carpeting with a crowbar. The hardwood floor under all that was so much nicer than the carpeting. We only have an area rug under the piano, and in the winter, one in front of the fireplace. Both have a black background with earth tones in the patterns. (Chosen so they won’t show any dirt.)
I do have a steam mop to clean the floors, as with the fireplace and the parrots, the floors can get pretty dirty.
I never had a parrot, but my parakeet did not take well to steam cleaning.
My house came with a carpet in the designated bedroom, just plywood underneath that, so it stayed. Had some interesting stains, but I don’t entertain or sleep in there, so I didn’t mind.
My dog, Sam slept in there and a few times when the wall neighbors’ dogs barked or it thundered or she figured what the hell, she peed on the carpet. Whatever she was eating had lots of tannins in it. The carpet stained and no amount of scrubbing got it out.
Sam’s been gone now going on six years. The bedroom/library/office is mostly used as storage so I can’t see the carpet.
It’s all good.
That’s why it’s a supremely bad idea to have carpeting in the bathroom — even if it’s washable. My mom had it for a long while. But do the math: Man who doesn’t aim properly when using the toilet + carpeting around said toilet + man who drinks a lot of red wine (tannins!)
There’s that and there’s everything else that happens in a bathroom. Carpet is just asking for a world of problems. Sam would have been tickled to death to have carpet in there. It was her favorite room in the house, probably because of the fluffy rug in there. I think it was the one rug she didn’t pee on.
I miss that girl.
I was just thinking that really bad hoarders probably don’t notice carpet stains.
I got inspired and cleaned the teensiest bit of vinyl flooring just inside my front entry. Next day I hurt so much I could barely get out of bed. The rest of the floors can stay dirty. They don’t look any different from when I first moved in anyway.
My plan is to get taller and more nearsighted.
Congratulations on your new home appliance purchase! I always found that emptying the sludge out of the reservoir tank was a thought-provoking experience.
It was more a thought-suppressing experience.
Yuck.
Asia and parts of Europe know the drill. Shoes off at the door. Pantoufles for everyone!
yay, a new word!!
It’s a GREAT idea that I have yet to adopt and may never get around to.
Last fall, Husband decided our living room carpet needed shampooing. He went out and rented a machine at the supermarket and got to work (he of the triple rotator surgeries, shoulder replacement, aching back, and neuropathy feet). Pretty soon the carpet started humping up from too much water, and Husband decided he needed to rush out to the Home Depot and rent a “knee kicker” carpet tool, which is a Satanic invention by which you slam your knee repeatedly into a blunt-ended thing with teeth that drags the carpet, millimeter by millimeter, into a semblance of flat. He ended up with extra carpet that had to be cut off, and now has exposed underlayment so I had to re-arrange the couch to hide it. Fun times.
I’ve seen that tool. I’ve seen young men use that tool and turn into old men right quick.
My mother decided that all houses should have concrete floors pitched to a central drain. She was self-proclaimed efficiency expert.
Did she actually HAVE such a thing, or was it one of those ideas one gets when one is just tired of housework (and there may be day drinking involved? 😈)
Mimi…she hated the repetitiveness of housework, and thought a quick hosing would cut down on her time loss 🙂 No, we had hardwood floors and she held off until ‘after 5’ for a cocktail.
Hey… it’s ALWAYS 5pm SOMEWHERE on the planet! 😉
Ah! It was always Dave’s dream! Cleaning the house with a hose! It DID cut down on my knickknack purchases.
How did you find a place to store it? That detail is what would stop me, even after we finished re-arranging the entire house so that our eldest and his family could visit.
That and my vacuum cleaner occupy whatever space they were in last, tucked in a corner like naughty children.
I used to shampoo our carpets every December when my husband would take a week+ and ride his motorcycle to Florida to visit his family.
Then he sold his motorcycle.
The carpets haven’t been cleaned in years. I can’t even imagine trying it with him in the house, being so damned “inconvenienced” by everything.
Buy him a motorcycle.
We have one made by Bissell. We used it a lot back when we had pets. I have to admit we haven’t cleaned our carpets for quite some time now, sadly!
I thought it was kind of fun but I think I need to do it again and haven’t got an extra round tuit.
I have no carpeting or curtains for the reason I have better things to do.
I’m not a curtain person myself. Window Treatments in general puzzle me.
Yes! Fellow non-curtain people! Our neighbors are not voyeurs, as far as I can tell, and I keep an eagle eye on them, so I would know. 😉 Also, we’re surrounded by a LOT of trees and shrubbery, which lends privacy. I prefer having as much sunlight as possible in here, for our houseplants. Also, I prefer keeping housekeeping to a minimum, and curtains get dirty and have to be washed. (Needless to say, my mom had them, and they were the first things to go. After her, of course.)