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.

Curious Creatures

A few days ago, I had a meeting to attend. I was given the wrong time, and so arrived quite early (when in fact, I thought I was 15 minutes late!). I wasn't sure if I was only 15 minutes early or if it in fact started at the top of the next hour, so I decided against going home to wait and then being wrong (and late) again. I went into the room we were to be meeting in and found a few chairs set up along the back wall. Not being in charge, I didn't know how the chairs were going to be set up for the meeting, so I just sat in one of the chairs already there.

As I sat there looking out at the empty room I noticed a dark spot on the carpet. Occasionally there are refreshments served at meetings and I figured that this spot was the remnants of something spilled. By the time I had determined that the meeting was in fact at the start of the next hour, I happened to look up just as this dark spot (which up until this point was quite stationary) began to run in a wide circle. It was, in fact a spider. I wasn't sure what made it suddenly run around, but after it made a few turns, it stopped, again looking like a small stain on the carpet. After about 5 more minutes, the spider ran around in a wide circle and stopped. This happened repeatedly. It would rest and then run. Not going anywhere in particular and not making any progress in any one direction.
I considered using my notebook to let it crawl on and putting it outside, or even smashing it. But I didn't. I just couldn't interrupt it's curious regimen. Run in a circle, stop and blend in. Repeat. So I just watched it.

Ten minutes to the next hour and the women hosting the meeting arrived, bringing in their supplies. I noted that the spider sat quietly in the middle of the floor as soon as the movement of people was detected. I got up and helped set up the chairs and saw that the spider remained motionless. We set up the chairs in a large circle, as the meeting was to be a discussion/sharing type, leaving the spider undisturbed. When they were set up, I sat in a chair a few feet from the spider, and wondered if it would go back to its curious movements once the meeting began. However, one of the women in charge walked across the circle to place the agenda on each of the chairs, right in the path of the spider. Noting the impending danger, the spider immediatly jumped up and made a straight line for the side of the room, disappearing behind the remaining chairs stacked along the wall.

Don't we all act this way some times? We run around in a seemingly mindless manner, but in fact doing what suits us for the moment. Then when there is a sense of urgency, we know just what to do to make things work out. Hopefully we have the sense to get out of the way when danger approaches and know when it is okay to be carefree, even if it appears as though we are only running about in circles. I had no real point to this story, but I thought it was just something interesting that I was the only witness to. Funny how a little spider can make you feel philosophical.