Whew

This image says it all. I am tired. I have Ben Gay slathered all over my shoulders and back. I have new appreciation of our ancestors of the female variety. How on God's great earth did women do anything but clean back in the day? And MY, how strong their arms and back must have been! This old house must have been much harder to clean back when the fireplaces were walk in and their main mode of heating and cooking. Things weren't sealed up properly back then either. Add in horses and stables and the mess you'd track in all over the house and uggh! What a mess it must have been. I just can not imagine.

You see, I thought my house was clean. Oh, there's the occasional pile up of paper work or clutter, but in general, the place usually looks pretty good. I dust. I vaccum. I clean the bathrooms, etc.  Jeff uses the swifter thing and helps a lot around here.  We used to have a house cleaner come twice a month to give the place a good once over, but when I stopped traveling it seemed silly to pay someone for what I could do myself. Boy, I am re-thinking that now!

Can I just tell you I can't BELIEVE how dirty my house was when I really took a super close look. I have to wonder how deep the last housekeeper cleaned. And once I did take a real close look I could not be stopped! Every corner, every crevise....nothing was safe from my scrutiny. 

For one, when you have a 300 year old house, you have 300 year old crevices. You have gaps between the wide plank floors that require a toothbrush type scrubber to get the gunk out. There are all sorts of cracks and corners for dust bunnies to lie in this house and I am shocked I never noticed before. I think the mop and swifter just glazes over the top. My knees are a bit sore from going around on all fours in search of said dirt, but let me just say with confidence - those floors are clean enough to eat off of now! Secondly, all the moving of stuff from one room to another and the sanding caused a lot MORE dust to surface. It got worse before it got better. I have been at it now for 3 straight days. Wow, what a lot of work. Feels good... in an exhausting sort of way. Well...now that it's done it feels good! :-)

 I can see my Gram smiling down from Heaven. She used to be obsessed with cleaning her house. Her name was Katherine (Kate) and I used to call her "Katie Spic-n-Span". LOL. (I get it now, Gram. I really do.) I also get that the next time I get a housekeeper she needs to have good knees for scrubbing 3 floors worth of hard wood floors! Mine are not cutting it!