Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Cleaning Leads To More Cleaning

All I wanted to do was clean the bathroom.  I did the usual from up to down and then it came time to mop the floor.

The sqeezie sponge disintegrated!  The local stores did not stock a replacement.  So, I wiped the floor with small towel from a bucket.  And then wiped it again with clean water.  The mats were drying after being soaked in the laundry tub with a bit of laundry detergent.  After they were rinsed several times the next day outside (garden hose and I left them out to be rained on), I waited for them to dry.

They wouldn't.  Cold humidity is really useless for drying.  It took 5 days for them to get half dry and then I just dragged them into the basement and waited.  And waited.  So they eventually dried and I was ready to put them back in place.

But there was dry grit on the floor, so I decided to vacuum the floor with my stick vacuum.  After a pass, there was more dirt on the floor then before.  Oh damn.  So I dragged the larger cannister vacuum out.  That was useless!  No pickup at all.

So I checked the both for being filled.  The stick bagless container was empty.  The cannister bag was empty.  That meant problems.

I'm not the world's best fix-it guy.  But I can try some things by logic.  It took 15 minutes to figure out how to take the cannister suction head apart.  I got the screws all loose easily, but nothing wanted to come aprt.  Which made no sense.  What were the screws for?

It occurred to me to turn the suction head over.  Then the top came right off.  You wouldn't belief what I found inside!  The entire suction head was packed with cat hair.  There was almost an entire cat in there.  And to be fair given the length, a fair amount of my own hair.

I started by just picking stuff out from the brushes.  Then I realized it was far more involved.  I got some pliers to pull more out. But if I had it to do over again, I would have brought it to the garage and used the air compressor and blow it all out faster.

On the other hand, I know more about the insides of the suction head, so maybe it was worth it.  In any case, when I put it back together, it worked like NEW!  Dang the sucker (literally) worked great.  So I did the rest of the house.

That's how things go sometimes.  You try to do a small thing and it turns into a big thing and you are glad you did it.  I did the whole kitchen like that last week.  Started with cleaning the M/W and the entire kitchen was clean 3 hours later.

And I did get the bathroom mats set back in place...




3 comments:

AnnDee said...

That' the problem with doing housework. You get it all done, and six months lather you have to do it all over again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
My college roommate borrowed a stick vacuum from my boyfriend over the summer. When we returned in the fall, he offered to sell it to us. My roommate refused, saying it didn't suck. BF asked if she'd cleaned it. The look on her face when she realized that it probably wasn't (all) the fault of the vac!

Megan said...

So if I send you my address ...

As for AnnDee, I'm so impressed that she does the housework every six months! LOL

Megan
Sydney, Australia

pilch92 said...

I wish I was that ambitious.

Behind Yardwork

I find it harder to do yardwork these days.  Bad knees, bad back, muscle cramps from gripping tools tightly...  I think I have pushed my bod...