I feel like Cinderella

No, not as bad as it sounds.

Our landlord is stopping by this weekend so the place must be in tip top shape. The carpet is getting steam cleaned tomorrow, that will be a great help. On the elbow grease front, I just spent 5+ hours cleaning the place (and I’m not done!). Most that time was spent in the kitchen, with special effort on the linoleum.

Now, there surely was a better way, but I took off most the dirt by hand, with a sponge. May I just tell you, it’s pretty tedious work getting down on your hands and knees and using a dinky sponge to clean a kitchen floor. About a third of the way through I turned my head around to see what remained and thought, “this is turning out much harder than I anticipated.” In the end, the first pass took over an hour. Then I mopped. Twice.

The end result however, is very satisfying. The floor may be cleaner than when we moved in. Of course tomorrow, it will be a day of tossing back advil like candy.

—Jul 23, 2004