Turns Out I Was Cleaning My Tub Wrong

We recently had to redo our bathtub.  It started with a little tiny spot on the side.  I was cleaning the tub and thought, good grief I missed something, but when ran the brush over it the spot didn't move.  Flash forward a few months later and that little chip was slightly bigger and now leaked if you took a bath.  So we didn't.  For months only showed in our bathroom.  It was driving Dr. J crazy. The man just likes to soak in the tub.  He wanted to just put epoxy over it but I was worried it would exasperate the problem or really, just look worse.  We'd gotten a number from our plumber on some people who could patch it, but the little spot was going to cost 200.  Then we started to notice more cracks, all over the tub in fact.  We looked up putting a new tub in, but that would be a huge hassle and paying someone to do it could cost thousands.  We looked at rebath but everywhere I looked people were complaining about water leaking, the grossness of the plastic, and the smell.  Finally we decided to have our tub refinished.  It took an afternoon and our house smelled horrible.  It was so bad in fact that we left all the windows upstairs open on a cold December night and slept downstairs in our family room on a blow up mattress.  In the end it was totally worth it though because we have a brand spanking new tub and were able to use it the next day.  When the technician was working he gave me a little talking to about tub cleaning, and I found out I've been cleaning my tub all wrong for years.

The main thing is not to use anything that is going to scratch the tub.  THAT MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WITH GRAINS IN IT!  Ajax...NO!  Soft scrub...NO!  Nothing that is going to scratch.  I also had gotten the "brilliant" idea of pintrest to clean the tub with a dish scrubber filled with dawn and vinegar.  This is unfortunately a NO, NO!.  What the tech told me is this.  Every time you put something grainy or scratchy on your tub you tear little tiny scratches into the surface of your fiberglass tub.  Those little tiny scratches are the perfect place for soap scum to hang out and once it is in there the only way to get it out is more scratchy grainy stuff and it just keeps going on and on.  His suggestion, spray the thing down with Scrubbing Bubbles once a week and then just wipe it down with a wash cloth.  If the stuff doesn't come off, spray it again and let it sit longer.  So there you have it, permission for the guy who has to fix tubs that idiots like me messed up, to just let it all go.  So why yes I will take that.   

One Thing In My Life Is Utterly Exhausting...

That thing is cleaning.  It isn't just the physical act, there is this whole mental and emotional demoralization going on.  Cleaning is constantly necessary, and is the one thing I can never get a complete handle on.  The house is constantly in a state of decay, and I feel like I'm just barely holding back the tide.  When I make dinner, I am creating a mess that will need to be cleaned.  While my kids are eating they are dropping little bits here and there that will need to be picked up.  While I'm washing my clothes there are six people wearing outfits that will need to be washed.  That's almost a full load of laundry there.  When my daughter is looking for a "lost" shoe, she is throwing four pairs onto the floor.  While I'm putting groceries away the kids are dumping crackers on the floor.  While I'm reading to the kids, the baby is pulling all the books on the shelf.  And even if the whole house is picked up (which is never) somewhere in a corner somewhere a child is pulling socks off and shoving them into a toy bin.  The kids actually are amazingly helpful.  They will pick up toys.  They love to vacuum, dust, and clean windows.  They will reluctantly clean toilets, and for the most part they remember to clear the table after themselves.  Their hearts are definitely in the right spot, but they are children, and their hands are often up mischief, and their mere existence is slightly messy.  Don't believe me, you should see what they do with hand soap, or for that matter the state of the bathroom after they bathe themselves :)  So for now I'm just tired, and when I'm not tired from doing the cleaning, I'm tired from thinking about it.  Getting up to get started is usually the biggest part of my battle. Here are some cleaning tidbits from today:

 

Gigi covered the floor with five slices of bread broken up into tidbits so that Cheetah could get a "snack" when she wanted one, because nothing says delicious like bread crumbs laced with dirt and toothpicks :)

I constantly have a collection of clothes at the foot of my stairs that I find and throw there throughout the day as my children strip off pieces of clothing and leave them where they fell.  Socks are the worst.  I find them hidden in the toy box, stuffed in shoes, under the couch, behind the TV, in kitchen cabinets, under the table, behind the garbage can in the bathroom, in the backyard.  Captain E will say, "Mom I don't have any clean socks."  "How is this possible," I'll ask, "You have 36 pairs?"  Well I'll tell you how it is possible, they are all hiding in various corners of my house!

I guess I could just give up on cleaning all together but that makes me tired to think about as well.  So I guess I'll just keep slogging through, so I'd better cut this short, because last time I checked I still had a pile of dishes that needed washing!