Cleaning your home

[Madame deVenoge]

Whether castle, home, or apartment, cleaning must be done.

Today, a U.S. holiday, I am doing some deep cleaning, and cleaned my primary shower’s drain with a millipede tool. You would not believe the human hairball that came out. And then I scoured the damn thing over and over with Soft Scrub with Bleach and a toothbrush. It is now sparkling clean and looks like new.

Do you clean your own home, or hire it out? What’s the most disgusting thing you’ve ever cleaned in your own home?

 

Full disclosure: my housekeeper comes once a week, but she doesn’t get into cleaning the really gross stuff - hers is more of a regular clean - dust, vacuum, mop, clean countertops and toilets regularly. 

[kissdbyfire]

We’re up to 7 rescue dogs atm so we’ve basically given up on cleaning at least until the young ones stop eating the furniture, clothes, etc.

[BigFatCoward]

37 minutes ago, Madame deVenoge said:

Whether castle, home, or apartment, cleaning must be done.

Today, a U.S. holiday, I am doing some deep cleaning, and cleaned my primary shower’s drain with a millipede tool. You would not believe the human hairball that came out. And then I scoured the damn thing over and over with Soft Scrub with Bleach and a toothbrush. It is now sparkling clean and looks like new.

Do you clean your own home, or hire it out? What’s the most disgusting thing you’ve ever cleaned in your own home?

 

Full disclosure: my housekeeper comes once a week, but she doesn’t get into cleaning the really gross stuff - hers is more of a regular clean - dust, vacuum, mop, clean countertops and toilets regularly. 

We are getting a cleaner this week. But probably for a once a month top to bottom deep clean and we will maintain. 

I hate the fact I have to deal with the hair in the plug in the bath that I have never used. 

We have a pretty even split, though gender stereotypes are maintained when it comes to putting the bins out for some reason.

My 2 Yr old son is a savage and makes tidying as opposed to cleaning comoletely futile. 

Edited May 29 by BigFatCoward

[Mlle. Zabzie]

Hire it out.  Don’t have the time to do a proper job myself.  Most disgusting thing?  Honestly anything having to do with an appliance or area that has water. They just get gross.  We have to have a front loader washing machine because city and while we leave the door open and do all the other things, well, there is only so much you can do and you have to deep clean it every few months.  Ugh.

[Nas!]

1 hour ago, kissdbyfire said:

We’re up to 7 rescue dogs atm so we’ve basically given up on cleaning at least until the young ones stop eating the furniture, clothes, etc.

I’ve always found it strange that people have bred dogs for very specific purposes and trained them to do highly specialized tasks, but that vacuuming up dog hair isn’t one of them. 

[Tywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Hire it out.  Don’t have the time to do a proper job myself.  

I find cleaning to be meditative. When I was younger I had to clean my grandfather's garage when I was grounded. It was large and dirty as fuck. Then he'd fine one spot I missed and I had to clean it again. And then I'd have to go down the street and clean a bunch of old women's garages. After a while you made peace with it. So now I enjoy cleaning. I can play records in my head without any music from the experience.

Anything is better than being on punishment and having to shovel horse shit for an entire day in the sun.

Edited May 29 by Tywin et al.

[maarsen]

17 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I find cleaning to be meditative. When I was younger I had to clean my grandfather's garage when I was grounded. It was large and dirty as fuck. Then he'd fine one spot I missed and I had to clean it again. And then I'd have to go down the street and clean a bunch of old women's garages. After a while you made peace with it. So now I enjoy cleaning. I can play records in my head without any music from the experience.

Anything is better than being on punishment and having to shovel horse shit for an entire day in the sun.

As someone who shoveled pigshit everyday for a few years, shoveling horeseshit for one day is nothing. I also had a job on a chicken farm owned by a well known soup maker. Shoveling chickenshit for a summer was my lot.

[Tyria]

I used to clean religiously once a week when I lived alone. Even when I had roomates, it was always once a week. My roommates were almost always guys, so I had to keep them on it. Most were good, but there was always one I had to berate. It's not my pee all over the toilet and floor ffs. 

Kept that up moving in with Mr. Tyr until about mid pandemic. Being in denial for months and spiralling into depression and being too stubborn to go back on meds led to me just not giving a fuck. Mr Tyr kept up with his half and did most of mine. Now that I'm much better (thank you Pfizer! for the jabs and the meds), some things we still do every week/day, and some things we wait till one of us just can't take it anymore!  

We split things fairly evenly. I do kitchen, upstairs bathroom, dusting, pick up dog poop. He does floors, downstairs bog, garbage, litter box and the downstairs hang out room (because he spends more time down there). Most of the gross, heavy, or high up cleaning stuff goes to him, the former just because I can get away with it, and the latter because I'm wee and he isn't. 

eta: I would looove to hire a cleaner, but I am wary. Are they doing it right? Are they using my unscented skin friendly products? Really don't want to go pee and end up with eczema on my arse.

Edited May 29 by Tyria

[dog-days]

1 hour ago, Nas! said:

I’ve always found it strange that people have bred dogs for very specific purposes and trained them to do highly specialized tasks, but that vacuuming up dog hair isn’t one of them. 

That does explain why dogs have such a fraught relationship with vacuum cleaners. They know a rival when they see one. And those robo-vacs have moves. 

[A True Kaniggit]

The dog/cat hair is my biggest obstacle to keeping the place clean. 
 

Also, the cat seems to time her hairballs for right after I shampoo the carpet. (And it’s always on the carpet, never in the kitchen where it would be easier to clean up)

[Fragile Bird]

5 hours ago, Madame deVenoge said:

Today, a U.S. holiday, I am doing some deep cleaning, and cleaned my primary shower’s drain with a millipede tool. You would not believe the human hairball that came out. And then I scoured the damn thing over and over with Soft Scrub with Bleach and a toothbrush. It is now sparkling clean and looks like new.

I cracked up when I read this. In one of the “items too small for a thread” threads more than a year ago, I described seeing the water in my bathtub going down very slowly when I showered, so I got one of those mini drain snakes advertised on tv at the dollar store. The stuff I pulled up was gross and disgusting, lol.

Now I’ve put a sort of spiky plastic ring thing around the drain (also a dollar store purchase) and I clean it up after almost every shower. My hair is very short now and I’m shocked to see how much breaks off!

[LongRider]

5 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Anything is better than being on punishment and having to shovel horse shit for an entire day in the sun.

Horse shit I can take, dog shit, no, it just grosses me out!   

[Tywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Horse shit I can take, dog shit, no, it just grosses me out!   

Wheelbarrows, one after the other and when there weren't any you'd have to groom them. And it sucked because you could see the basketball court and soccer fields not that far away.

[LongRider]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Wheelbarrows, one after the other and when there weren't any you'd have to groom them. And it sucked because you could see the basketball court and soccer fields not that far away.

Sucked to be you, I've always liked grooming horses. 

[Tywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Sucked to be you, I've always liked grooming horses. 

I liked grooming the horse I bonded with. Grooming a lot of them was a bitch of a task.

[LongRider]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I liked grooming the horse I bonded with. Grooming a lot of them was a bitch of a task.

I can see that, especially if you were distracted by other things going on. 

[Argonath Diver]

I'm a bachelor in my 40s. My apartment tends to be very clean - I procrastinate far more important tasks by cleaning the house. But I'm a big lazy stoner sometimes, and if I'm bartending a hard few shifts, the place can look like a typical single guy's messy apartment. I have a guest coming over tonight so it's all lovely at the moment. 

I keep a much cleaner place than I did when I had roommates. I like the compliments I get when people see my neat living room with - shocker - lots of books and art on the walls. I'm in an air force town, so most of the units in my building are totally barren but for some sparse furniture. My downstairs neighbor has an identical Floorplan but it looks very un-lived-in. Alas, having lots of Stuff does make for more cleaning.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

It's just my wife and I in a small condo, so we clean everything ourselves. My wife is from Japan, where standards of cleanliness and clutter tend to be more severe than the typical American. I came from a house that often a little messy but not dirty. We've actually come to balance one another one really well; I've grown more fastidious in cleaning and organizing, and she has learned to be okay with some level of disarray. 

Grossest thing we ever dealt with was unclogging our toilet pipes, which we did using a drain snake and camera borrowed from our neighbor. It was really cool to track the camera feed and root out the source of the blockage, and was quite a relief to get it all out...but that mass of rotting black matter that we had to fish out was absolutely revolting!

[baxus]

When we first started living together, my wife (girlfriend at the time) and I would clean the apartment once a week, on Saturday or Sunday. Once we bought our apartment, we quickly decided that a couple of free hours on the weekend are worth more than what we'd pay for a cleaner and had gone with the cleaner ever since. Worth every penny, not going back to cleaning myself as long as I have a choice.

Obviously, we do the day-to-day stuff but the cleaner does the main part.

[Iskaral Pust]

When we were young & (relatively) poor, we cleaned together weekly.  Since we became parents, we’ve had bi-weekly cleaners.  We maintain a very tidy and clean home between those visits, but the cleaners do the heavier lifting on kitchens, bathrooms and floors.  As @baxus said, I place a high value on my time.  Plus, I still have plenty of house projects to complete on my weekends.  Owning a house is very different to renting an apartment or owning a condo.