Susan, who's on record claiming not to have needed alcohol to get through the pandemic, has had a glass of wine every night since Saturday, coinciding with a week of baby-sitting duties for her mother. A glass a night is no big deal, but a week with her mother underfoot is. Tonight, she was down to her last inch of pinot noir which was positioned within knocking over range when Susan knocked it over. It was impressive how far and wide an inch of red wine was able to spray the room including a smart bomb ability to hit anything that would stain.

Susan busted out her favorite all purpose homemade cocktail of vinegar + water + liquid soap + essential oil originally introduced by her pal Yuna. Yuna would saw a roll of paper towels in half, stuff it into a coffee can, pour the homemade cocktail into the can, poke a hole in the plastic lid, then feed the paper towels through the hole a la disinfecting wipes. Susan prefers to use hers as a spray, she has other homemade cleaners meant for specific purposes, but this one's great in emergencies.

Anyway, Susan crawled around on her hands and knees for twenty minutes locating every red dot she could and replacing the smell of red wine with vinegar and essential oil.

That's it, that's all she's got for ya today; she knocked a glass over and cleaned it up.

In anticipation of imminent sleepover company, a chain reaction of organizational tasks was put into effect by Susan a week ago. Sunday morning had her cleaning out the junk drawer in her kitchen. Any other day of the year Susan doesn't care about her junk drawer, it's a perfectly fine location for all manner of things that she either uses or should have thrown out long ago. However, since the recent gathering of the household screwdrivers and little tooly things she thought that the junk drawer would provide them with good centralized storage.

She emptied the drawer completely and began picking through the contents in which she found two folding hex key sets (think IKEA Allen wrenches) and a teeny little multi tool with needle nose pliers, a knife & combo bottle opener/screwdriver. This immediately made her recall an even teenier Swiss Army style knife that Cousin Lisa had given her years ago. It was an industrial gift* originally received by her brother promoting Lotensin, a blood pressure lowering drug, and it consisted of a knife, combo screwdriver/nail file and a teeny but sharp pair of scissors. Lisa passed on this petite and practical item to Susan as they washed their hands in the ladies room of a long forgotten restaurant.

For years Susan carried the little red army knife in her pocketbook, but eventually it made its way to the junk drawer & although not there now, she knew it was still in the house. Happily she thought of it and Cousin Lisa and continued on with her task.

She removed a package of wooden skewers from the junk drawer collection & brought them over to a larger drawer filled only with kitchen related items. Within this drawer sat an adjustable bamboo drawer organizer which Susan fiddled with in order to accommodate the slim package of skewers. She noticed that the width of the organizer was slightly more expanded at the front of the drawer than it was in the back. This difference was probably less than 1/10" but it caught Susan's attention, so she removed the organizer to see what was back there.

Guess.

Susan said Hello Cousin Lisa out loud to the empty room, smiled then dropped the little knife into her pocketbook.

FYI: *Industrial gift was the husband's term for promotional give-aways.

Susan got up, made herself a cup of coffee and started her Saturday morning cleaning during which she removed the garbage can from underneath the sink and left it out to be emptied when she got around to it.

The garbage cans in her house are always filled to capacity because neither of her children will dump them unless they are asked to, or unless Susan does it herself. They will comply, often making her wait until after they complete whatever they claim to be doing so that they don't have to jump up and do it right then. She has been known to ask them three or four more times with lessening degrees of patience.

Kids. Whaddya gonna do (about them).
Ed. note: To be read rhetorically.

Susan went on to do something else, possibly to crawl back into bed and watch an episode of Last Tango In Halifax, and left the garbage can in the middle of the kitchen floor with trash bag filled with garbage still inside.

Later when Susan emerged to continue her June-Cleaver-ing she noticed there was something a little off in the kitchen. Everything looked fine, but she felt something was different.

The garbage!
It had been dumped, a new bag put in, and then returned to its place under the sink. One of her children had done this without being asked, which is something that has NEVER happened in the eleven years they have lived in the house.

Susan never imagined this would turn out to be such an auspicious day.

Susan LOVES cleaning the bathroom, she saves this treat for Saturday mornings, unless she was previously inspired to do so on Thursday night because someone made it smell like urine.

Let's talk about that.

It's been Susan's experience that people with penises pee on the floor. They probably start out pointing at the toilet, but the urine doesn't end up there. She's not quite sure what goes on to divert the stream, but at the very least they should clean up after themselves.

Saturday mornings find Susan on her hands and knees, her face inches away from a place not meant for faces, breaking her elderly back just so she doesn't have to lie in bed and smell urine.

You didn't know that Susan lived in a pig stye with farm animals, did you?
Well, her secret's out and she hopes you won't think less of her.

Susan could not foresee that an impulsive Friday night purchase of a pretty shower curtain would put her behind the toilet Saturday morning scrubbing grout with a toothbrush.

Susan's daughter responded to the question put forth by her mother of can't anyone in this house do some laundry? by getting up to do some laundry.

What a good girl.

She put dark clothes into the machine, filled the tub with water and took a plastic bottle down from the shelf.

Is this what I use, mom?

She was holding the bleach.

Susan clutched at her heart then traded it for the detergent.

Bleach

The other evening Susan's daughter showed up for her goodnight kiss wearing bleach stained flannel pajama bottoms.
Susan is directly responsible for most of the laundry done in the house and the last time she saw those pajama bottoms they were fine.
The husband pitches in with laundry duties but that's usually when there are no more clean towels.
And the kids are complaining that they have no pants.
Or underwear.

Based on a series of previous laundry related episodes
the husband knows to remove Susan's clothing from anything he puts into the washing machine.
That was a hard won battle for Susan.
If you think she goes crazy when he hand washes the glassware, you can't imagine the level of hysteria unleashed in the house when she finds that he's washed, or dried, any of her clothing.

Mercy! It used to drain Susan of all her energy.

Susan takes great care with her clothing because most of it is either moderately expensive or very cheap and can't just be tossed into the machine all willy-nilly. Back during the dark days of the husband's laundry involvement Susan was able to open the dryer door and know immediately that it contained something it shouldn't.

Back to the pajama bottoms.

Susan pondered the bleach stain but decided to let it remain a household mystery because she was working on the computer and didn't have any mental space available at that moment.

The next day Susan was taking laundry out of the dryer.
A load of purple and red laundry, similar to the color of the pajama bottoms. She pulled out her daughter's purple shirt and found it had a large bleach stain.
Then a red shirt. Bleach.
Then two more purple shirts. Bleach, bleach.
She was getting woozy.
Susan removed one bleach stained carcass after another until she got to the thing she dreaded most; her own shirt.
Bleach.

Susan steadied herself as she surveyed the destruction lying at her feet. Not one item spared.

The husband was sitting quietly at the table watching the scene unfold and offered the following explanation;

That he undertook the consolidation of two open containers of bleach into one
directly over an open washing machine
which had recently completed it's cycle.

Susan maintained her composure. Her shirt had been destined for the Goodwill bag after one last washing,
there was no need to over react. Most of the other clothes belonged to her daughter and could be discarded quietly, a cover-up if you will.
Susan set upon this task quickly then moved on as if nothing had ever happened.

Again With The Green Cleaning

Susan is spending her final week of unemployment running a few errands including getting a pre-employment physical while without medical coverage.
However, this morning finds Susan free to do as she pleases.

She began by dyeing her hair back to a close approximation of it's original color.
Then she went into the kitchen to make coffee before sitting down at the computer in blissful solitude. While waiting for the coffee to brew she decided to hand wash the cookie pan that had been sitting in the sink for two days.

If the reader will recall, Susan has experimented with green-cleaning by mixing varying portions of water to vinegar to baking soda & adding a small amount of natural plant-based liquid soap (she likes Seventh Generation which was on sale at the supermarket) and some tea tree oil. Susan likes the smell of tea tree oil and had such great success cleaning her bathroom with this combination that she mixed a green-cleaning cocktail for use in her kitchen.

Please take note that since the baking soda tended to clog up the spraying mechanism in her Home Depot spray bottle she now uses a recycled dish detergent squeeze bottle, which is much more effective.

Susan's cookie sheet was black from years of things spilling on it and burning. Added to that were the dinner remnants from two nights ago. Instead of using regular dish detergent Susan used her green scouring cocktail.

As Susan scrubbed, an unbelievable thing happened,
layer upon blackened layer evaporated.
You know, with some elbow grease.
Now, while Susan acknowledges that blackened cookie sheets pose no threat to anybody and are probably a silly thing to scrub spotlessly clean, Susan was fascinated. And being in the unemployed frame of mind, she saw nothing wrong with obsessively scouring her cookie sheet until her shoulders ached. Just to see how far she could get.

When the results began to slow down Susan threw some salt into the equation. This was only minimally effective and Susan took a break to drink her coffee.
She admired her work but knew she could do better.
She went back to scrubbing, giving up only when she could no longer lift her arms or unclench her fingers from around the sponge.

Susan Green Cleans Her Tub

Susan likes standard caustic chemical cleaners as much as the next guy but decided, purely as an experiment due to the boredom of unemployment, to clean her filthy tub with vinegar and baking soda.

Susan did a small amount of research and settled upon the combination of 1/4 cup baking soda (as a scouring element) and 1/2 cup vinegar (cuts soap scum) which she administered with a scrubby sponge. Oh, how her shower gleamed! (After much rinsing). Susan was very happy with the result although she had to mix several batches.

Susan was very attracted to a recipe for a tub & tile spray which she felt may be more practical and convenient. But, she would have to purchase some tea tree oil.
Tea tree oil has many uses as she came to learn. It has antiseptic and anti-fungal properties and can be used both on the skin or in the toilet.

Susan mixed 1 and 2/3 cup of baking soda with 1/2 cup liquid soap into a spray bottle. She added 1/2 cup water, 2 tablespoons vinegar, a half teaspoon of tea tree oil & shook the crap out of it. Then she added more water when the baking soda appeared to be clogging the spray mechanism. However, again Susan's tub gleamed! (After minimal rinsing). And it smelled nice in a way that didn't make her cough up blood.

So, Susan took her spray bottle into the kitchen to try out on her eighties era counter top. She sprayed, scrubbed a little bit and wiped like the unemployed Stepford Wife she was, and at the conclusion her counter was clean! It even pulled Cousin Lisa in from the other room with it's magical natural mojo. Cousin Lisa is an organic gal & has a long list of things she can't tolerate such as aerosol, Splenda & old house smells. Cousin Lisa shared Susan's new enthusiasm for natural household cleaners and made it her business to go home with the recipe for Susan's green cleaning spray.