August Spring Clean

Me and Claire have been hard at it for two days now!

Ha - that's got your attention. Sorry to disappoint, I'm not talking about my second favourite hobby, but in fact my least favourite. That great necessary evil we call housework.

If, like me, you like to run a fairly tight ship, then you probably think you are on top of your housework. Every week you hoover round, do the kitchen surfaces, clean the bath and sink, get the skiddies off the bog, all that sort of thing. Keeping things running smoothly at a comfortable level of tidiness and cleanliness.

It's only when you drill down deeper and do a "big clean" that the true horrors become apparent. Now we are having visitors on Saturday, and whilst I am sure they don't stand on ceremony, you want your house to look good on such occasions.

So a big clean it is. And this is when you find those little bits you always miss - like the little bit round the back of the sink pedestal. You decide to run a cloth round there and out comes a hideous collection of gunk. But then there are the other jobs that don't need doing every week that you think are going to be straightforward.

There's a lot of other stuff to do before you can even get started, popping out to get any specialist cleaners you need and running into various problems. Problems such as completely being unable to remember your pin in the shop due to 3 year old firing questions at you faster than Bamber Gascoigne, the wing mirror falling off the car on the way home, and all these other little things that are sent to try us. Many hours after the planned start time, you are eventually in a position to get actually started.

Anyway, one of the things I wanted to do today was to clean the windows. Seems straightforward enough. Go into playroom (double glazed), run cloth over inner panes, so far so good. Then open the panes to get to the main windows.

Between the two panes I then discover a previously hideously unnoticed collection of dead insects, bits of wood peeling off the windows etc etc. This needs a bit more work. So I need to move the bit of furniture out from beneath the window to get at it. Then you discover the next horror. This bit of furniture hasn't been moved for a few weeks and you discover all manner of spiders webs, big clumps of dust, all delightful wrapped up in dirty old crayons and pencils and various other toys. So you forget about the windows and start on this. Then your 3 year old comes in and discovers a lost toy down there! It's one with batteries! He turns it on! It doesn't work! Screams!

So you abandon that job to go and find some batteries to get this toy working. As you can see, your cleaning plans have wandered somewhat off what was planned. Rather like one of my blogs in fact.

Of course the batteries are in the kitchen which is currently being turned upside down as the wife is busy scrubbing filth out of corners that we never previously knew existed, so there's no room to do anything. 1 year old wants a nappy change, 3 year old wants sweets, it's coming from all sides.

Anyway eventually all of that is sorted out. And I do get to clean the windows. But as they are being cleaned from the inside the dirt on the outside becomes more apparent.

Now we no longer have any window cleaners. I dispensed with their services some months ago, over a small difference of opinion over how things should be done. So I do the outside myself. Now the wiindows themselves are not so bad, but the filth that attaches itself to the frames is horrendous. So basically the whole lot had to be sponged down, destroying an entire arachnid ecosystem in the process but it had to be done. But as I'm working I still keep noticing more things. Look at the bottom of the front door! Look at the step! Aaarrrghhhh!! This will never end.

End it has - for the moment. I have just had a nice sandwich and a drink and written this blog as a bit of therapy. But I guess it's time I got back hard at it.

"Never mind all that bollocks, Jason", I hear you cry! "We've all been wondering and waiting to hear since the opening couple of lines - so what's your favourite hobby?"

Ha Ha - now that would be telling!

If you have enjoyed reading this blog, please take a look at my books on Amazon (Paperback & Kindle), where you can read lots more of the same! Click here.

x x Jason

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