Another insight into one of my former lives: I used to do house keeping for Holiday Inn and clean mega-mansions in Telluride, CO.

It was a long time ago and I came away from those experiences unafraid of back-breaking/mind-numbing manual labor and with the knowledge of how to get things CLEAN.

Taking 'Mighty Maid' to a whole new level...

While all that chemical exposure at such a young age may have left me slightly OCD – in my first apartment I was scrubbing outlets and light switches with a toothbrush. And I’m not kidding – being married and having a 100-plus pound long-haired dog has mellowed me out a bit.

So when I read this ‘Real Simple’ pre-holiday deep cleaning guide, a number of things ran through my head.

1) I understand the point of a deep clean is to be thorough, get things genuinely clean. But reading this just made me tired. Real Simple my foot!

2) Even if I devoted an entire evening/weekend to some of these chores, the house would be torn apart in chaotic madness. What are people with kids supposed to do? How long would I have to wait to re-assemble my furniture so I could collapse on it in victorious exhaustion?

3) The muffin tin in a Ziploc idea had never occurred to me. But it’s genius.

To be fair, Real Simple also has countless articles on how to speed clean effectively. Because really: Where else will you find putting household clutter in the bath tub and pulling the curtain closed advocated as cleaning up for company?

And on a positive note: I’d be willing to bet if you spent the weekend lugging buckets of soapy water around the house, vacuuming, flipping mattresses and emptying your cabinets, your biceps would be a thing of beauty.

Not sure how many of you have company coming for the Turkey Holiday, but I do toast this article’s message of advanced preparation.

So here’s to good housekeeping!

This entry was posted on Monday, November 8th, 2010 at 10:40 pm and is filed under The bigger picture.... You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.