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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  3362 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Neat Freaks and Household Cleaners: Seeking Advice

A few things.

1) You need to enjoy cleaning. That probably means buying tools that make it more pleasant, and it means a total change of attitude. In your case, for this to work out long-term you need to enjoy cleaning up after two roommates that apparently wallow in their own filth. I don't see that happening, do you? So your solutions are short-term while you figure out how you want to live and find people who will support that.

2) You didn't mention your cats. This illustrates that you are a typical cat owner that doesn't understand the level of schmutz cat domiciling adds to a house. I'll bet there's a litter box that's resented at least as much as the dryer lint, too. Cats increase your need to vacuum by a factor of 2 per cat. Whatever normal non-cat-people do, you need to do three times as much. See also: Furniture. Upholstery attachments were invented for cat owners, they just don't say it on the box.

3) The actual pace of cleaning depends on a lot of factors and the Internet can't judge that as well as you can. For example, I moved 50 yards in 2011. The first place had hardwood floors. The second place has carpet. The first place had the Roomba run twice a week because hardwood floors in Los Angeles means black feet. The second place I vacuum maybe once a month but then I have to shampoo because the carpet gets sticky from all the NOx and free radicals in the air (as well as the tire and kerosene particulate coming off the runway). Should I vacuum more often? Maybe. But the carpet hides the skunge waaaaay better than the hardwood. I vacuum when my wife starts to get stuffy. The carpet sure doesn't show it.

4) The real trick is to never let it get messy. The messier you let it get, the more insurmountable it is to clean. I don't dust. Period. Things don't get particularly dusty around here. Period. But what dust they have is grimy and sticky and awful and the longer you let it stick around the thicker it gets. If I dusted, I wouldn't know this. Instead I'm left in a position where I don't dust (and am looking forward to living somewhere dust isn't sticky) because the act of dusting is horrific enough that I pay two nice toothless ladies about $150 every nine months to clean after I spend the day cleaning.

5) Ignore the Internet. It's pretty hilarious that a drain that sucks down three people's worth of shampoo, conditioner and soap is accused of being slimy and gross because semen. Get a grip. Drains are disgusting and if you have at least one person with long hair using the shower you will have to hook a dead rats' worth of hair and skunge out at least every other month.

Those are the basics. Relish the fight, be honest as to what's going on and accept that the act of cleaning means being up to your elbows in filth regularly and you'll do fine.





user-inactivated  ·  3362 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    4) The real trick is to never let it get messy. The messier you let it get, the more insurmountable it is to clean. I don't dust. Period. Things don't get particularly dusty around here. Period. But what dust they have is grimy and sticky and awful and the longer you let it stick around the thicker it gets. If I dusted, I wouldn't know this. Instead I'm left in a position where I don't dust (and am looking forward to living somewhere dust isn't sticky) because the act of dusting is horrific enough that I pay two nice toothless ladies about $150 every nine months to clean after I spend the day cleaning.

In the Ohio valley they don't have dust as much as they have this vile, evil demon pollen that sticks and turns green when the humidity hits in the summer. I have air filtration in the house or else I would not ever be able to sleep. In the fall when it starts to get cool and finally dry I go through and bomb the house with as much dusting as I can stand to get rid of anything the filters could not take care of, then have to do the same thing at the start of summer. But yes 100% here don't let it get bad in the first place. And this goes to show that everyone is a bit different and every house/situation will have its own needs and issues.

    5) Ignore the Internet. It's pretty hilarious that a drain that sucks down three people's worth of shampoo, conditioner and soap is accused of being slimy and gross because semen. Get a grip. Drains are disgusting and if you have at least one person with long hair using the shower you will have to hook a dead rats' worth of hair and skunge out at least every other month.

I have no idea where this semen thing came from, but yea. Soap scum on the walls also happens in the pipes. You have any clue where this nonsense started?

kleinbl00  ·  3362 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I grew up in Juniper Hell. Every season, lemon yellow powder drifted everywhere and coated everything in a chiffon dusting of pure eyewatering sneeze.

I was over at a friends' house once. He had a pool. There was a bathtub line of chalk yellow at the water line. It was about an inch and a half tall and about an eighth of an inch thick. You could run your finger along it and get a solid handful of bright sunshiney glop.

I hate New Mexico.

user-inactivated  ·  3362 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Atlanta

A friend of mine had a picture that got picked up by one of the buzzfeed clones where she had over 2" of pollen on her car one morning. And now I cannot find the image.

One of the interesting things about these types of pollen events is that they may be caused by frustrated male trees in urban environments due to the lack of female trees.

_refugee_  ·  3362 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm willing to admit the semen thing might be a reach, but I am also interested in whether maybe there could be other factors impacting the drain that I don't know enough to be aware of that contribute to the clogging. I did read hard water can impact the drain too, so I do plan to check what kind of water we have, but frankly I've never had a problem with this to such extent before so I lack knowledge and experience for this sort of thing.