So I am in a seize-the-bull-by-the-horns mood, which might be a good thing if there weren't so many dang bulls that all need seizing at the same time.
I drop off Joe and Pete at camp and stop at the hardware store on the way home to pick up bricks for edging my little herb garden. Remember how I was going to plant herbs along the front walk? I dug up the grass and got most of the herbs in, but I wanted an edging and little signs. Today I resolve to buy the bricks and lay them out, expecting to feel some satisfaction. I hadn't noticed from afar, though, that the grass wasn't willing to give up its erstwhile space. It's having a disagreement with the herbs about who should be growing there -- a literal turf war. Stella tries to pull some of it up and concluded, "That is a mama job, not a little girl job." I think it might be a Pete job, actually, because that boy loves to dig. I decide to send him out later with his spade.
Inside I tackle the toilet, which I had left soaking in bleachy cleaning solution before I left. The nasty stuff under the rim has been threatening to take over the bowl and thence the known universe, and in valiant defense of the free world I roll up my sleeves and set to scrubbing. I scrub for a while and then apply a second coat of bleachy cleaning solution. "I know," I think to myself, "I'll bleach the seat too. It's totally nasty underneath, even though it supposedly gets wiped down every day." I leave it to stew and go in search of craft sticks to make little calligraphied herb garden signs.
You guys, I used to own a package of craft sticks. I clearly remember its presence in the downstairs craft closet, but they seem to have disappeared in the Great Room Switch of 2012. They are nowhere to be found on the upstairs craft shelf. It is possible that I threw them out, thinking, "I am just not a person who will ever use up a bag of craft sticks." (Which is true.) It is also possible that they are in a secret hiding place, from which they will emerge immediately after I purchase a replacement stock of craft sticks to taunt me with the fact that I am really, really not a person who will ever use up two bags of craft sticks. The whole craft shelf, actually, reeks of guilt and failure. Or maybe it's the bleach fumes. I go back downstairs.
I scrub the second coat of bleachy stuff until the colonies of nastiness are beaten back. A person could still see them if she stuck her head upside down in the toilet to look under the rim, but I have to think that a person who sticks her head in a toilet deserves what she gets. Then I attack the seat. In addition to bleaching the festering nest of nasty that lurked underneath the seat, it has also bleached a stripe on the upper surface. "That's okay!" I tell myself determinedly. "We'll just get the top of the seat nice and clean too!" Except we won't. While I was upstairs waving away Shrinky-Dink-induced tristesse, the bleach was eating away the finish on the toilet seat. My efforts to clean the toilet have yielded a brownish streak across the seat which is quite a bit more conspicuous than the original under-the-rim conquering armies. Nothing makes a bathroom look as clean and welcoming as brownish smears across the toilet seat, am I right?
Is the moral of this story that you should never scrub your toilet? Because I'm having trouble thinking of another moral to this story.
Love this posting...
Last week, I decided to scrub the shower...actually, I decided to pour half of a container of bleach down there and let it sit for a while and magically it would be clean.
It was exciting!
After 10 minutes, I decided that I would drain the bleach and then, since I needed to take a shower anyway...well, I would take a shower in my nice bleachy smelling tiny shower.
Yeah. Good idea. I almost passed out from the fumes.
Posted by: gina | June 13, 2013 at 12:01 PM
Oh, Jamie :) Sorry to hear about the seat.
My last fun-with-bleach went like this: I was bleaching the bathroom floor to decontaminate it, and I didn't think to check that the over-shoot pee accumulation in the corner (that is supposed to be mopped each week) had been cleaned up (it hadn't). What does old pee turn into? Ammonia. So I'd just mixed ammonia and bleach, and had to escape to fresh air ASAP.
Posted by: mandamum | June 13, 2013 at 12:16 PM
If you buy Lysol or Clorox brand under-the-rim goo and let that sit for a good long while, it works magic.
Posted by: entropy | June 13, 2013 at 06:01 PM
The moral of the story is that if it takes more than one coat of bleachy stuff, then it might be worth taking a trip to your favorite orange apron clad box box store and buying a nice new seat.
Posted by: Svetlana | June 13, 2013 at 09:50 PM
Sigh... I don't know what to say either, excpt that I should go clean my own toilet bowls. Sigh...
I hope you can help the herbs win the battle against the lawn. ;)
Posted by: Lilian | June 14, 2013 at 10:11 AM
Oh, this made me giggle. =) Thanks!
Posted by: Jen | June 14, 2013 at 11:01 AM
Oh man my toilet needs to be cleaned. And the shower too. So much mildew. I've been putting it off because I so hate the smell of bleach.
Posted by: Melanie B | June 15, 2013 at 09:24 PM