The Curse of the Clean Kitchen Floor

I am writing this in the hopes that doing so will ward off the curse this week. Cross your toes for me. A few weeks back, I wrote about Spring Cleaning Break. Well, we didn't do morning chores every day like I had hoped. But we did spend the bulk of one day near the end of the break pulling the house back into shape, and that gave me the motivation to get back on track with regular house cleaning when the kids headed back to school..
The week following Spring Break, I got back into my routine, including a thorough mopping of the kitchen floor. The problem with that is when the floor hasn't been mopped in I-can't-remember-how-long, as soon as you do, it becomes a magnet for all things messy. I call it The Curse of the Clean Kitchen Floor.
It's like the floor misses all the grime and sticky, and so must replace it as soon as possible. Now I know that spills happen. That's why they invented Clorox wipes. But if you leave the floor unwashed for too long, the spills increase in frequency and sometimes intensity when you bring out the old steam mop (yes, I steam mop. I'm spoiled).
What makes me think so? On kitchen cleaning day, I spruced up the dishes, uncluttered the counters and mopped my heart out. I was finished by lunch time and I was proud of how my kitchen looked. Then the dog tripped me and I sloshed my glass of milk across the floor. A fluke, I'm sure. I soaked it up, followed by a damp rag to ward off sticky-ness. Later, I pulled a shallow dish filled with defrosted chicken breasts from the microwave and tipped it a little south. Can we say salmonella on the floor? Again, this is why they invented Clorox wipes.
No biggie, 2 spills isn't that bad, is it? HA! Just you wait. As we finished dinner, I picked up the container of broccoli from the table. I was looking to see how much was left when my little hip attachment slapped at it and she knocked it from my hands. I rolled my eyes and went for the camera. The dog, however, had other plans. She swooped in before I could turn around and slurped up the broccoli faster than should be possible. This picture is all I got. There was over a cup of broccoli on the floor, and the camera was on the counter behind me. It only took seconds to grab.


The moral of the story is, mop weekly. Because if you let it go longer than 2 weeks, the curse will mess up the glorious gleam of the floor that was clean, if only for a minute.