"Homemaker" means mainly the cleaner-upper! My word and though for May 21, 2010

"Homemaker" means mainly the cleaner-upper!

Most of us who stay home rather than work outside the home, and even most of the ladies who work jobs outside their homes, are more than "homemakers".  What we are in addition to homemakers, well, we are the ones who clean, Everything!

We clean the house, which includes the fun job of toilets, sinks, tubs, and showers.  We sweep, vacuum, mop, dust, dust mop and wipe off.  There are dirty clothes, dirty kids and dirty porches which need to be cleaned.  We don't just clean off dirt, but dried on food; if we have small children still at home, we may have to also clean off dried blood, or worse. 

There are critters too - spiders, and if you live in a rural setting or are just "lucky", you may have to clean up/out mice or yucky scary snakes or clean up after one of those as a pet of your child.  You might be called upon to clean up after a dog or cat, or a cat with a sensitive tummy, as my poor grand daughter has to do!

So homemakers spend more time than anyone wants to think, cleaning up, EVERYTHING.

That's why odors in the house drive me nuts.  I can understand and can cope with the usual - results of feeding everyone soup beans or adding too much garlic and onion to the spaghetti sauce.  Those don't last and besides we all know the whats and whys or them. 

The ones that get to me are the unusual odors.  At times we have had major "odor hunts".  A couple of these times the offender turned out to be the tennies of one family member or another.  We simply made sure the wearer of those 'odiferous' shoes washed their feet properly and then we set the shoes out on the porch.

Another time the littlest one's bedroom smelled like, you guessed it like that little one had tinkled in there lots of times.  So, the remedy was wash all the bedding, make sure the mattress didn't need replaced and make sure the little one was clean; since we were still helping in the bath, we thought that base was covered. 

All the obvious cleaning was done and still a faint odor lingered.  We burnt candles.  We sprayed spray.  We were stumped, until, one day the older child caught the little one, putting wet under pants back in the drawer!  The why, of course, not wanting to admit wetting the pants!  But if you have children you know when asked, "Why?", the child said, "I dunno".

The walls even need wiped down here and there sometimes, and the refrigerator handle!, the TV screen, things that the children put in their mouths, and lots of things have to be cleaned, regularly.  When my children were at home and little they had lots of plastic toys - dinos, dolls, cars, animals, blocks and etc.  It was a monthly, or more often, ritual to put all these things in a tub of water with a cup or so of bleach and let them sit for five or ten minutes before I rinsed them thoroughly and laid them on clean bath towels to dry.  The other things I'd spray with disinfectant now and then, and some I'd just pitch in the trash.

Regular scrubbing of my kitchen, the bathrooms, their toys and even their furniture keep my children from getting sick so often.  I've noticed children seem to get more colds and sniffles than I remember mine getting and I wonder if the mothers are so busy helping the dads put food on the table that they never even consider washing or disinfecting toys.  Many use the antibacterial on hands and etc. but I haven't heard many discussions about the toys and everyday things children always touch or try to eat, getting any disinfecting. 

(I'll end this soon.)  

This week I did an exceptionally thorough job of cleaning my home.  We have it on the market and I want it to be tidy and clean IF anyone comes to look.  So, the garage, where I have some art and framing equipment, and the extra frig of sodas and etc. was looking pretty bad.  There were spider webs everywhere with spidies' food supplies hanging in the webs!  So, I did some bug collecting, with my vacuum. 

Actually, it was fun, because as I was sucking up a poor little guy who, even with eight legs, couldn't outrun my vacuum, I began to make up a story in my head. 

It's the spider, who having survived the ordeal and crawled out of the dirt when the vacuum's collection cup was emptied in the trash, is telling about the experience to his little spider friends!  Well, you can "write" your own description now that you know the plot.  The way think it would go, the little guys (oh, or gals) who have been thru it, must think about it the way people who have been taken by aliens think of their adventures!  No one believes them and, it's just about that unbelievable to the ones experiencing it.

"I swear Harriet, I'm not making this up.  I was just walking along when I heard this terrible roar, smelled something funny and swoosh, I was taken up and into this long, long tunnel.  I passed out and when I came to, there were dead bodies all around me and these long yellow and white threads (hairs - teehee) and....."

A "Homemaker" is also a bored cleaner who makes up stories as she cleans to keep from going nuts.  Wait, maybe it's already made some of us nuts!  Oh well.

"Homemaker" means mainly the cleaner-upper!