A Slightly Off Kilter Dusting Method

It’s always been a strange phenomenon around here to clean for the cleaning crew. Oh, I understand “picking up” because if stuff is everywhere how can they clean… But that’s not what I mean.

This house has always been a “place for everything and everything in its place” kinda house. So much so that when my cousins were teens and came to visit, they would move the chachkies fractions of an inch and just sit back and wait. It wouldn’t be long before Mom would move it back to where it belonged.

There’s nothing wrong with an orderly home and after reading the words my Gramma wrote for Mom, it all makes so much more sense.

But recently, we’ve hired a friend of the family to aid in the cleaning of the house. She was scheduled to start this past weekend and I wasn’t too surprised when I heard Mom mention some cleaning because “we don’t want her to think we’ve never cleaned before.”

And in truth, the cleaning we were doing was the deep cleaning shit that hasn’t been done… Like ever.

When I arrived home a bit early on Friday, Mom mentioned that she wasn’t sure how to clean the bears…the stuffed teddy bears on the shelves that are too old to risk any real kinda cleaning but freaking dust magnets.

Then mini-me asked if he could earn money dusting my room… (No clue where he got THAT idea…) and in my room are some fun old hats…. You know… The kind ladies would wear to church or out… the ones with fancy ribbons and feathers on them. That also attract dust the way I attract children and dogs.

And that’s when I had a pseudo brilliant idea. Canned air.

no… not THAT kind of canned air…

You know, the magical stuff you use to blow crap outta your keyboard at work. And I thought cool- we’ll take the hats outside and blow the dust off and wa-la perfection…

But ya know what’s BETTER than canned air?

Dads compressor. And y’all know I’m not one to shy away from using the cool toys.

So if we’re gonna use the compressor to “dust” the hats… LET’S DUST ALL THE THINGS!!!

And then it was like a steady parade of Mom’s treasures streaming from the house to the backyard where Dad and I would blow the dust to oblivion (because let’s be honest- there was absolutely no way on God’s green earth that Dad was going to let me have all the fun) and Mom was loading the boys up with “new” dust magnets that have likely NEVER been dusted. Ever.

But being outside, we were limited on places to put stuff after we had cleaned one thing and before cleaning another.

And then… This happened.

I love that my boys are still silly and goofy.  I hope they never lose that.