cleaning

Dreaded tasks

Posted on by backuphill

Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com

I spent the weekend doing stuff I just really dislike. Chores that probably really need to be done and I can do so that I don’t have to pay someone else to do them, but chores that are not a pleasure to do by any means.

The washing machine (front loaders really do suck, don’t buy one even though they are being pushed like hell) hasn’t been working all that well as of late, so it was time to clean out the filter and rebalance to see if that helped. Disassembled, adjusted, cleaned, water everywhere (there’s no good way to keep that from happening), and then rebalanced (never mind the fact that the house isn’t level or square). All of that to find out that, other than cleaning out the filter) that it pretty much operates the same as before all that effort.

Cool. I hate life.

Then it was the dryer. Time to clean out the dryer vent.

Shop vac, cleaner brush tool, drill, duct tape, and hours of effort. Good lord! There was a ton of lint in there! CLEAN OUT YOUR DRYER VENT AT LEAST ONCE A YEAR! Anyway, that part was relatively easy. But, as I was putting it all back together I realized after starting the dryer back up to blow some of the remnant lint out of the line that it wasn’t pushing air like I expected…which means it was disconnected some place under the house. Damn. So, another 30 minutes getting ready the supplies I would need under the house and then moving everything in the way to get to the crawl space. Sure enough, disconnected. So, I put that all back together and got it all cleaned up. Not it works like it should.

Today I am sore and stiff.

I am too old for this crap.

I truly hate doing these kinds of chores. I am also cheap, so paying someone to do them isn’t even a consideration. I just suck it up and deal.

But seriously, why does it always have to go sideways every time? There is always an issue. Always something that needs to be repaired or adjusted after doing it. Why can’t it just go smoothly and with zero hassle?

Anyone else hate certain chores or tasks that they do because they don’t want to pay someone to do it? What are they?

Robot vacuum

Posted on by backuphill

round robot vacuum

My vacuum is not this one. It is from a different company and this photo is just for demonstration purposes. Photo by Jens Mahnke on Pexels.com

The house has a robot vacuum.

It’s kinda new. It has been roaming the house at a pre-planned time for about three months now. Honestly, it’s nice to not have to sweep as often. It also cleans up some of the rugs that are by the entry points of the house, there there is that too.

But, it is also a lot like having a freaking toddler in the house.

Anything that is on the ground gets moved around and sometimes you have to go hunting for stuff. Example: shoes. It will push slippers and shoes under the furniture. Thus, I find myself on the floor trying to fish stuff out from under the bed or night stand. It will also sometimes grab shoe laces and drag the shoe around for a while.

It closes doors and gets stuck on the inside of a room. It keeps working, unlike a toddler, but then you have to open the door and direct it out of the room. So, now doors have to be closed when it starts so it doesn’t get stuck in room, just like you do when you have a toddler in the house and you don’t want them getting into stuff.

It gets stuck under things and doesn’t finish what it was doing. The TV stand. The coffee table. The night stand. If it gets caught on something, it just stops.

It unplugs stuff and then you wonder why it isn’t working. I have had the phone charging cable not power up my phone when I plug it in at night. The robot unplugged it from under the night stand. The subwoofer for the sound system wasn’t working and movies/tv sounded funny. The robot unplugged the subwoofer from the powerstrip under the TV stand. It once drug a phone cord all over the house.

It picks up stuff you really don’t want it to…like screws you accidentally drop or didn’t know came out of something. Fridge magnets. Hair ties. Batteries. It’s like a toddler that puts everything in its mouth and you’re running around saying, “What do you have in your mouth? Lemme see!”

Why does it treat somethings, like the wall and furniture, like it is glass and eases into cleaning the edges while at other times it just bashes it’s way around the same furniture, like it has no eyes and doesn’t have a clue that it is getting close to something? Same for a toddler and cats…you tell it to be careful and nice, gentle, and it does for a while and then all of the sudden it grabs a big handful of fur and pulls, sending the animal scurrying away.

I tell you, I don’t have time to babysit the robot.

Seriously.

Park not!

Posted on by backuphill

photo of brown labrador retriever sitting in front of driveway

Photo by Chris F on Pexels.com

Get your #@$%&#! car off my driveway!

Alright, bear with me here. I am trying really hard to not be an arse-hole, but when someone does something blatantly just because they can when they know they shouldn’t…well, that just burns the hell outta me. Do you think I am being unreasonable?

When I first moved into my current house, it had a gravel driveway. I didn’t like it (call me a sissy if you want) because when I washed the car I would drag the hose around and then it would be covered in small bits of gravel and dirt and not very pleasant to pick up because it was all grimy.

Anyway, I happened to fall into an opportunity to get it blacktopped. So, now it is a nice smooth and surface to park on and to wash the cars on. Now, it’s been nine years since the blacktop was done. It has been seal-coated twice in that time and it continues to show signs of wear over time. It’s starting to crumble on the edges. Its starting to crack where tree roots exist under the driveway. It is starting to sag in one spot where a heavy city truck decided to turn around in our driveway. And, there are some spots of the driveway from where vehicles have dripped fluids.

There’s where the rub comes in! I know EVERY single drip spot on the driveway and pay close attention to them. They are signs to me. They tell me if something on the vehicle needs attention. At a time in the past there was a car that parked in the driveway (because it was mine) that dripped an awful lot until it was replaced. Why did I park it in the driveway and let it leave spots on the driveway? Because it’s MY driveway!

So, now the issue. There are others who have parked on the driveway who also have vehicles that drip fluids. They know this. It isn’t a something they didn’t know about. It wasn’t new to them. I have asked them not to park in the driveway because I don’t want extra spots on the driveway that need to be cleaned the next time maintenance needs to be done. Plus, it causes me stress not knowing if it came from one of our vehicles or not and then I have to figure it out. So, there are several other places to park that are close to the house that is in gravel or grass where they can drip away and it isn’t inconvenient at all.

But NOOOOOO, they still park in the driveway like they live here! It just burns me up. The disrespect is irritating. Are they doing it on purpose? I don’t know. Did they honestly forget? I don’t know and I don’t care.

Just don’t do it! It’s mine and I don’t wanna share with your POS car! Go away and take your car with you! Don’t come back until you figure out where to properly park!

 

Am I being unreasonable? Unfair? Possessive? Or, is what I have requested reasonable?

Who left this here?

Posted on by backuphill

woman in white cap sleeved shirt blowing dust

Photo by Jakob on Pexels.com

Ever notice that someone has left a mess in your house? The worst part is that as soon as you spend time cleaning it up, like almost immediately, you have to do it again! I swear I am gonna lose my sh…

Anyway, to be ore specific, have you ever noticed that some jerk has strewn dust all over the house and didn’t bother to clean it up?

Yeah, me too. Who is it and why the hell do they keep leaving all this dust in the house and why don’t they every clean it up? Maybe a better question is why do they have an endless supply of the stuff?? I don’t have an endless supply of anything so what makes the “dust distributor” so special?

Sheesh…I have to go clean, AGAIN. Thanks a lot dusty…

 

Unwrapping the aftermath

Posted on by backuphill

assorted color gift boxes

Photo by George Dolgikh on Pexels.com

Well, folks, the stockings are down and the presents opened. It was chaos from the start and there is a ton to do now that all are gone.

Not sure about your family, but mine appears to just swoop in to open presents and consume food before jetting off to other places and people to visit, which leaves a tornado of debris scattered about the house and hours of cleaning after the fact. That isn’t to say that there weren’t also hours of prep before everyone even showed up…so when taken all into account there were probably four times as many hours preparing for and cleaning after than there was actual time spent with family.

Don’t get me wrong, time spent with family was great and the joy did finally come as the smiles and laughter filled the room. It did finally come. BUT, it was soon lost in the time spend cleaning floors, dishes, the fridge, taking out the extra 100 pounds of garbage, and putting the furniture back where it belongs.

Does anyone else have that feeling after Christmas where the “What did we just do?” dread of having to put life back to normal appears that it will take an inordinate amount of time? Like maybe you’re the only one that will be working into the wee hours of the night just so there will be some resemblance of normalcy the day after?

Dust much?

Posted on by backuphill

abstract angelic art blast

Photo by Sebastian Voortman on Pexels.com

Who the hell is supposed to dust around here?

Anyone else have this problem? You know, the one where you wake up one day and there seems to be a layer of dust on everything?

At work, there is a cleaning crew and I would assume they are supposed to dust, but apparently not. I can understand not dusting the inner portions of shelving and whatnot, I don’t expect that every nook and cranny be dusted. But do you think you could maybe run a cloth across the top of the book shelf once in a while? I mean, serious, it doesn’t have anything on top of it!

Seriously folks, there is enough dust on top of the shelf to qualify as an indoor, organic planter.

I’ll take care of my home, but I don’t expect to have to do it at work too.

Trying to get out of the gutter

Posted on by backuphill

house covered with red flowering plant

Photo by Lisa Fotios on Pexels.com

It is that time of year, fall, and it is really irritating that I have to keep climbing to the top of the ladder on a regular basis. And by regular basis, I mean like every other week…

In the Northwest we get a lot of rain, and wind. As a result, the wind causes all the leaves and pine needles and pine cones and small twigs that blow off the trees end up on the roof of the house. When the rain comes it washes it all off the roof and into the gutters on the house.

I try to keep up, but I usually am reminded that the gutters need cleaned when it is pouring down rain and the gutters are overflowing. Then I gotta drag out the ladder, climb to the top, and empty the gutters while I get soaked to the bone.

Sometimes being a homeowner sucks.

Seriously, guys, why so slobbish?

Posted on by backuphill

white ceramic male toilet

Photo by Markus Spiske freeforcommercialuse.net on Pexels.com

I am going to go out on a generalization limb here…guys are freaking slobs (moan).

I know, there is something weird about me saying that since I am one but I don’t think I am a slob and I think my wife would agree if you asked her. I pick up after myself. I put stuff away, where I found it. I clean. Maybe, I am the oddity?

Anyway, my place of employment shares a building with another organization and I can safely say that the guys in the other organization are freaking slobs. I can safely say that because my company only has three males at this location and two of them are on vacation – leaving me as the only guy in the building that doesn’t belong to the people upstairs.

That being said, guys, if you can’t aim that “waste disposal tube” at the urinal and get every drop in there – then sit the hell down! Why do guys have such a hard time with this? At work, at the ballpark, at a restaurant, in a Honeybucket, you name it and there is likely piss all over the place…the edge of the urinal, the wall, the floor…every. freaking.where. Seriously? Get a grip, and I mean that quite literally.

black and white vanity top with stainless steel faucet

Photo by ato de on Pexels.com

So you move from one gross mess to the next. After leaving the “splash-o-rama urinal,” you turn around to wash your hands and it looks like a baby elephant just took a freaking bath in the sink. There is water everywhere and its puddled up all over the counter! #WTH  Did any water actually make it back in the sink? Good grief people! Clean up after yourselves.

Seriously, you guys are gross.

*Pictures are not from my actual building because that would be gross, and why would I make you guys put up with that too?*