This really erks me!

A lady did this right next to me today and I though to myself, "oh I have to write a blog about that!". I REALLY REALLY REALLY hate it when people cough without covering there mouth. I mean come on, do I look like I want your germs? Maybe you think I do, but seriously didn't your mom teach you any manners? Even my 1 year old can cover her mouth when she coughs or sneezes! I just think it's really gross to cough your sick germs all over someone else and/or their personal space. Do you like being sick? Well neither do I so please keep your germs to yourself so that I don't have to share in your misery. Thank you.

Vacuum Bliss

Recently Brad Luff told Beckie and I that a vacuum store in Redding had a vacuum there that was even better than our Dysons. We couldn't believe what he was saying so we had to go check it out ourselves!

So we planned our day around our little vacuum date and Friday afternoon we went to check out this vacuum rival. It was vacuum bliss. As the salesman explained to us there are vacuums and then there are Riccar vacuums, the fully-loaded Jaguars of vacuums. He gave us a full 30 minute demonstration and left both Beckie and I speechless. I still love my Dyson very much but the Riccar has some pretty cool features. Beckie and my favorite feature was that it has amber colored lights that light up on the front of the vacuum when you go over a dirty area. Once you have vacuumed up all the dirt the lights go back to white. How cool is that?!? A dirt finder! Never again would there be a question of whether or not your carpets are clean.

Don't worry I won't bore you by telling you all the details and all the cool features. Now the only question is how to save up to by our new vacuums... only $995.00 (yikes!). I think it's going to be a long time until I get a Riccar but until I do I will have vacuum bliss in my dreams. :)

Confession #7

I am always finding new things to be paranoid about. It's not that I'm looking for more things to be weird about it's just that things come up in conversations, then I start thinking about it, and usually it leads me to be more clean or more cautious depending on the conversation. Take this for example...

About a week ago Billy Brown and I were talking at the dinner table (don't worry Heather was there too) and we got in a conversation about a study that he had read, something about the places that the highest levels of bacteria were found. At the top of the list were grocery cart handles and restaurant menus. I new about the menus because I have worked in restaurants and I know that they are never cleaned, and if they do get wiped down it's with the same rags that they wipe down the high chairs and tables with. I NEVER let my menu touch my silverware, and I never let my silverware touch the table. Oh the things you learn working in a restaurant... anyways back to the topic.

So grocery cart handles... he was telling me about all these disgusting germs and bacteria that they found on the handle. I looked up a study online and here are a few of what they listed: "blood, mucus, saliva, urine, staphylococcus aureus, enteroccocus facaelis (fecal matter), streptococcus pneumoniae, E. coli (Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS), caused by the E. coli 0157:H7 virus), Rota Virus, Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease and even hepatitis B" (http://www.shoppingcartcoverstore.com/bacteriagermsoncarts.html). Pretty gross huh?????

I've always known that the handles had to be filthy dirty but I never thought it would be that bad! I always carry those sanitary wipes with me and after I am done shopping I always clean my hands off but Friday I was in Safeway and a thought occurred to me that almost made me throw up right there in the produce section. Here's what happens: your hands touch the cart handle and then your hands touch your vegetables, your fruit, etc!!!!! I have always washed my veggies and fruit before eating them but after Friday I will be scrubbing my veggies and fruit clean. Who wants to serve a salad with a side of fecal matter and E. Coli?!? UM GROSS!!!!!

Now that I have ruined your day and totally grossed you out I just want to say that you might want to think about getting the plastic produce bags, opening them, and then grabbing your veggies and fruit with those instead of actually touching them with your hands. Just a thought. When you bump into me at the grocery store you better believe that that is what I'm going to be doing. I may look silly but at least I won't be the one eating someone else's poop!

Confession #6

Yesterday morning I didn't vacuum the whole day and I didn't make my bed until 11:30am! Yup that's right, 11:30am. Getting up at 6:30am to call people on the East Coast really throws off my normal routine so now some days my bed doesn't get made until after I am done working.

Confession #5

These are my vacuum lines…
This is my beautiful vacuum…
As many of you know I am an avid vacuumer. I vacuum the downstairs carpet everyday and I do the wood floors about every other day, depending on how much dust is revealed with the morning sun. I also vacuum the entire upstairs every other day and sometimes lately I have been doing it every day now that our house is on the market. I know that this may seem crazy to most of you but vacuuming makes me happy. I LOVE my vacuum lines. I also love that it only takes me a few minutes to vacuum and after I am done the house feels 100x cleaner. Pip also loves my vacuum lines. It makes me crazy but most of the time as soon as I am done vacuuming he will go roll around and paw at the lines. Sometimes I will get the vacuum back out and go back over the lines but usually I just cringe and walk away chalking it up to the fact that he’s having a good time. I’m sure it will be the same once I have kids so it makes for good practice.

If Matt were here he would tell me that I have to confess about what I do when we have company over. So… what I do is I put everything that needs to be put on the table on the table, I light all the candles in the family and dining rooms, I turn on the music in the family room, and then I vacuum. After I vacuum no one is allowed to walk on the carpet until the first person walks through the door. Luckily our living room, downstairs bath and kitchen are all wood floors other wise we might be contained to one tiny corner! This makes Matt crazy! But I am a perfectionist and I want the house to look perfect when people come in so that’s my rule. If Matt had known that before we got married I wonder if he still would have said “I do.” Hmmm…

There is only one person, that I know of, that shares my strange obsession with vacuuming and that is my friend Beckie Luff. Beckie is actually the reason that I bought my beautiful Dyson. I was over at her house one afternoon and her Dyson was sitting out. She showed me all the cool features of her Dyson and she even let me try it out (most of you are probably thinking big whoop!), I was so excited. I immediately fell in vacuum love and a couple months later I took all my birthday money to Costco and bought myself my very own Dyson! Walking into Costco that day I felt like I had just won the lottery, I was so excited that I even walked right past the huge display of vacuums!!!

Anyways back to the vacuum lines. Most of you probably just vacuum in any random order and it doesn’t really matter what it looks like as long as it’s all clean. Well not me, I’m crazy. Every time I rearrange the furniture I come up with, what I think is, the best way to vacuum the room; and then I vacuum it that same exact way… every day. Every once in a while if I get a little crazy and try something different I can still see the lines from my other way of doing it because they are literally ingrained into the carpet. It usually takes about 2 times to completely get rid of the old lines. Sometimes, when I am feeling under the whether, Matt will offer to vacuum for me. While this is an incredibly sweet thing for him to offer, 99.9% of the time I tell him no thanks. It makes me crazy when he vacuums because it’s not in the same pattern that I do it in and I think it looks funny. Like I said before…I’m crazy. :)

Confession #4

I have to confess that I am TOTALLY terrified of toilets.

I am especially terrified of public restrooms because they are full of bazillions of germs and bodily fluids from thousands of other people. It grosses me out even thinking about it. I absolutely hate using public restrooms, which is a bummer for someone with such a small bladder as mine. I have to say that I never sit on a public toilet. My mom always taught us to do the squatting thing and to this day I am a squatter. I freak out if for some reason I lose my balance and a part of my skin touches the toilet seat. On that rare occasion where I am forced to not just pee (if you know what I mean) I make sure that I line the toilet seat with those wonderful paper liners and lots of toilet paper. Even though I have all that paper between me and the toilet seat on the inside I am cringing the whole time. And the thing that tops it all off is when some of the toilet water splashes up onto me! Seriously I FREAK OUT…every time…YUCK YUCK YUCK!!!!!

Now since this is a confession and I have to be honest I will also admit to not sitting on a lot of other people’s toilets. I don’t mind sitting on my own because I’m the one that cleans them, and I know that you could eat off of them, but I don’t always trust other’s cleaning habits to be as crazy as mine. No offense to all of you out there but if I see one of those germ spreading toilet wands sitting next to your toilet it’s highly unlikely that I will not be sitting on your toilet seat. Those toilet wands seriously gross me out! Most people bought theirs when they first moved out, like 10 years ago, and they have never thought to replace it. Just because you stick it in the toilet and swirl around with a little bleach does not mean that the toilet is clean. Those wands are not magic and the germs and bacteria don’t just disappear. Plus what about the thing I’m most afraid of, the seat? If you are cleaning the bowl with the wand then the seat is not getting cleaned. Oh I just think about all those other butts that have sat on it before me and it just gives me the heeby jeebies!

Okay I will stop picking on all of you that love your toilet wands. Please don’t take it personally because the fact that I’m confessing this means that I am FULLY aware that I am a clean FREAK and germs just really gross me out. I’m not afraid to admit it.

I hope you all enjoyed learning about my restroom experiences and have appreciated seeing a little more of a glimpse into my twisted mind. Until next week…

Confession #3

I bathe our cats. Yes, you read it right. I know you think I'm nuts but that's why this is confession number 3.

There’s only one sound that makes both of my kitties run and cower under beds, couches, or whatever that can get to the quickest. That sound is the sound of running water in the kitchen sink. Both of my kitties know that that sound means that it’s BATH TIME!!! You are probably thinking that I am nuts but believe it or not it’s not as crazy as it may seem. When we first got Pip he was literally covered in flees. He had thousands of flees crawling all over him and some of them even had the guts to jump onto us, YUCK!!! So the bath thing started the day we brought him home. He was six weeks old and for the first year we had him he got a bath every week. At first he didn’t really like it, and now that we have our other kitty he pretends to not like it, but deep down I know he loves it. The last time I gave Pip a bath he kept falling over because he was so relaxed. Imagine a 16 pound cat so relaxed from his bath that his legs just keep giving out and he isn’t able to stand up in the sink… I was crying I was laughing so hard! He acts tough but he’s just a big softy. Now Trixie’s bath is a different story, she hates them. Usually she will stand in the sink and cry the whole time. It is as if someone were ripping out her fingernails one by one. She stands in the sink and wails and then looks back at you with her big green eyes as if to say, “How could you do this to me?” It’s actually pretty hilarious.

Even though the bath routine got started because Pip had fleas 2 years ago I have kept it up because I think that clean kitties make for a cleaner home. Even though I give them a bath every other week I am still always amazed at the amount of hair that I find all over the house. I vacuum downstairs every day (that’s a whole other confession) and the upstairs every couple of days and I am always amazed at how quickly the vacuum canister fills up with cat hair. Personally I think it’s disgusting but what are you going to do? I think this summer I am going to have them both shaved so that will cut down on the hair all over the house (and it will give us something to laugh about). Sometimes when I am dusting or vacuuming I am amazed at the thought that I even have cats since they make such a continuous hair mess. I guess that just proves how much I love my husband since he’s the one that wanted to get a cat in the first place! :)

Confession #2

As most of you know I am pretty particular about most of the things in my home; I vacuum pretty much every day, I am constantly wiping off the counters and wiping the dust and cat hair off the other surfaces of my home, and any little thing that is out of place drives me crazy! All this to say that even though I am “Anal Annie” about most things you will be surprised to find that there are a few things that when it comes to cleaning them I am pretty lazy.

For example: baseboards… I hate cleaning baseboards! When I moved out of my apartment, of three years, I was forced to clean the baseboards and while it was quite a simple task I despised every minute of it. We have been in our home now for just over 2 years and to this day I have never gone through my home and cleaned the baseboards! I will admit to the occasional spot cleaning but I have never cleaned then all. Above is a picture of the baseboard behind the door in my bathroom can you see all the gunk on it? YUCK!!! Every time I sit down on the toilet I look at this and it grosses me out but I still can’t bring myself to getting down on my hands and knees to scrub the gunk off. Talk about laziness!!! You would think after 2+ years of staring at that a clean freak like me would have done something about it by now!!!

Here’s another example. About 6 months ago part of my retainer went missing (yes I had braces and yes I still have to wear my retainer at night!). It had been sitting up by my sink drying and when I came home from work it was no where to be found. I figured that one of my cats had jumped up on the counter, even though they are not supposed to (that’s a whole other confession), but I looked everywhere and couldn’t find it anywhere! Well last Friday I was doing my usual cleaning and I don’t remember why but for some reason I had our closet door closed and I glanced down by the baseboard… and there was my retainer… 6 months it had been missing and all that time it had just been laying by the baseboard in a layer of dust, hair and other yuckiness because I am too lazy to clean the dang things. Needless to say I picked up my retainer and cleaned that one corner of baseboard. Here is a picture to show you how clean it is now. So now that that one corner is clean I only have about 1,800 square feet of other baseboards to clean…probably not going to happen any time soon. Maybe someday I will get motivated and do it but that day is not today! :)

Confession #1

Since I am unlike a lot of you and I am slightly obsessed with cleaning, I thought it would be fun to add a confessions series to my blog. My “Confessions of a Clean Freak” series will be my confessions of crazy things that I think and am afraid of that most of you have probably never even thought of. I apologize in advance for my craziness and I hope that I will not offend anyone but merely open up a door for you to get to know me a little bit more.

Confession number one: hmm… where do I start… okay, here it is… I am slightly terrified of the bottoms of pant legs. I know this may seem strange but let me explain. For most of us our pant legs drag on the ground all day long touching everything that the bottom of our shoes touch. Now you would never want to touch the bottom of your shoes or take them off and lay them (or hang them) right next to all of your clean clothes! Think about all the places that your shoes and pants touch all day long. I’m guessing that they have walked across some pretty gross parking lots and if you have a small bladder like me I’m sure they have seen a couple of bathroom stalls and do you know what is on those bathroom floors!?! YUCK!!!

So why is it that people don’t mind the bottom of their pant legs touching their hands, their clean clothes, their food via their hands, etc. The last meeting Matt and I were at he sat there playing with the bottom of his pants while the speaker gave his talk and then when he was done playing with his pants his hands went straight to his plate of food where he picked up a piece of fruit and putting it in his mouth. I had to keep myself from vomiting because I could just visualize all of the germs that he had just put in his mouth!!! If I ever see him playing with his pants I will make him wash his hands before he even thinks about touching me!

So there you have it, confession number one. I know you probably think that I am crazy but at least now you will think twice before touching the bottom of your pants or you will at least think of me next time you to touch them! :)