This is why I don’t clean.

Christmas has come and gone, and though we didn’t have anyone up to visit*, I can’t enjoy a quiet family holiday without the house being clean. The piles of stuff sit in the back of my mind and nag at me until I start cleaning, and obviously that sort of ruins the Christmas Family Moment.

Thus, I found myself the weekend before Christmas preparing for a week-long bid to get our home clean.

Me: We have a 1200 sq ft apartment, so it shouldn’t be too hard. Right?
Universe: Ha! Ha ha ha! Whoo! Oh Lordy that’s a good one. Heh heh. You foolish woman.

Yesterday I went ahead and picked up a bunch of necessities before the big storm hit. We’ve got a nice little weekend nor’easter here, and it’s already 10 inches high out there, still falling fast. I hit up the Target, and $260 later I had groceries, a bunch of cleaning supplies, a new winter jacket for the baby, new gloves and hat for the big girl, and a few other miscellaneous items. Not bad, I thought. Among my purchases were a bottle of Resolve carpet cleaner spray, and Resolve carpet cleaner powder. I picked up the powder because it was for large areas of carpet, and it involved some scrubbing with a brush, which I figured meant that it would get all the nasty nastiness up and un-ground from the carpet.

I got home, read ALL the instructions, and picked a spot of the carpet to work on. Per the instructions, I covered the carpet thoroughly with the powder and got to business with my scrub brush. I could see it getting cleaner! I don’t know if it was the fumes from the cleaning chemicals or the joy of getting rid of the ground up Oreos, but I felt elated. Hopeful. Thrilled, even!

I look back at the instructions. I need to wait 20 minutes and let the stuff dry, then vacuum it up.

Me: That seems easy!
Universe: Ha! Ha ha ha! Whoo! Oh Lordy that’s a good one. Heh heh. You foolish woman.

20 minutes later I start up our little Shark Roadster, 5 years old, to vacuum up the powder. I get a square the size of the vacuum brushes cleaned before I lose suction. The canister has to be emptied. I take care of that, noting how much the powder really clogged the hepa filter! I continue vacuuming. Another 12in x 2in area is cleaned. Clogged again. I empty the canister and realize this may take a while. I start again and as my husband walks behind me, the vacuum stops. I figure he knocked the cord out. Nope, cord still in the wall. I push the on/off button a few times. Nothing. It feels hot. I call for DaddyGeek. He checks the fuse. Nope, that is fine.

We wait 20 for it to cool down and try again.

Nothing. It is completely dead.

So now my carpet is covered in a thick coating of deadly chemicals of death, and my vacuum is dead, and I have two small children bursting with the joy of Christmas coming.  We have to lock the kids in the bedroom and try and feed them snacks and entertain them with movies while my husband goes out in a fucking Nor’Easter to get a new vacuum less than a week before Christmas because the Universe hates me. (See above)

In the end, he gets the vacuum, he doesn’t die on the icy roads of death, my children don’t die on the deadly carpet of death, and I got to play about an hour of mindless Facebook games for an hour in my warm cozy house while the kids were ensconced in the bedroom because I’m a good mother, I’m keeping them away from the deadly carpet of DEATH.

The new vacuum is awesome and quickly cleans the mess without any trouble. That one section of my carpet looks great. Unfortunately that makes the rest of my carpeted apartment look like complete ass, so I must now go purchase stock in Resolve.