Baking Soda is my June Jesus

I suppose June Jesus requires some minor explanation. Over at that bitchy mommy's board where I spend most of days, there once was (or perhaps still is) a certain poster who went through phases. I have a tendency not to pay very much attention to things, but it seems that she found Jesus one June.

I don't where He was because I've always been a bit worried He might be lost in my closet with those decorative pumpkin decorations I bought on clearance a few years ago. Anyway, she went through a brief Ulti-Christian period, which is cool. This was right after immersing herself in a particular job and around the same time as trying to play ubersingle mommy.

But then it seemed Jesus was replaced by roller derby, taking half-nekkid pictures, and using the word "retard" as an online insult. Or something like that. I don't know what all. I don't pay a lot of attention to things but did come to realize she wraps herself in whatever her new "thing" is completely. As tight as pig meat wrapped in cheap sausage casing. Or a woman bound in red saran wrap. Which, amazingly, looks much the same as cheap sausage.

So June Jesus is the latest personal stage, fad, or preoccupation a person goes through.

The point is, baking soda is my new "thing." If you remember this post about my cleaning supplies habit, I've been working toward reducing my purchases. I did buy a bottle of store brand bleach when we were going through that UNCLEAN staph/cellulitis/leprosy issue, but I don't think I could ever quite quit the bleach. Maybe. One step at a time. The first step is admitting I have a problem.

Earlier this week, I was wiping down the stove top when I finally decided to employ the baking soda in a little deep cleaning exercise. Hol-ee Shit. My stove has never, ever looked this good. It looked so good that I lifted the stove top and cleaned the crud underneath it with baking soda and vinegar. The experience was so awesome. Enlightening. Lovely. I didn't have to scrub any harder than if I'd pulled out the Greased Lightening or Simple Green or whatever else I had left in my stock pile. It was so awesome that I cleaned my toaster oven and microwave with it.

I wasn't quite as successful with the toaster oven because some Tuba Girl decided to cook some muffins or cupcakes in there a while back. She overfilled the cupcake thingies and they proceeded to drip over into the bottom of the oven and they seem to be cooked on there very nicely.

For a woman who doesn't get out and do much, I'd say it was almost an orgasmic experience. Well, maybe not orgasmic in the true sense of the word. More like when you have to really, really, really sneeze and it takes a moment to build. Then it's just such a relief to finally sneeze. Sort of like that.

I was so excited that I bought more vinegar and baking soda to do something about the grout in the bathroom at my library.

I don't know how things work in other library branches, but it turns out I'm also the janitor. When I applied for this job over the summer, the job description stated I would be responsible for making sure the building was clean and in working order. I took that to mean I would be doing spot checks or something along those lines.

Wrong. The previous branch manager stayed on long enough to train me. At the end of the day, she said, "I usually just sweep one room a day. You'll want to wipe down the tables every once in a while."

I stumbled around a moment before I finally said, "So, uh, I have to clean?" Yes. Apparently so and she proceeded to show me the supply closet.

Holy shit. This job is almost like being at home except the building is even uglier. I get to clean, make children mind, and ask people to please bring me my mother fucking books back.

But that's cool. I need a job and apparently an English degree will currently get you something with built-in janitorial duties. At least I don't have to wear a hairnet. And I make Matt the Library Assistant clean the shit off the toilet seats. There's just a limit to what I can handle and the day I walked into the boys' bathroom to find little ass prints of poo all around the seat I screamed like a girl and said that was his job for the day.

Amazingly, he still seems to enjoy working with me. In all fairness, I have cleaned piss off the toilet and possible pubic hair out of the sink, so it's not like I make him handle all bodily functions. Also, to date, I've been lucky enough to not have the mayor of a neighboring town come up to my desk and say, "I'm sorry, but I have just shat on your floor." True story from the main branch. And I do believe Mayor Crazy Bitch has some sort of ass gasket problem anyway because previous stories about town include her having shat in the fake tree pots at a laundromat in her own town.

I've been here for almost three months and during that time I'd been happily sweeping and swiffering away at the bathroom floor. I was rather agitated by the ugly collection of dirt in the crevices and corners along the floor, but the main branch seems to be full of people who may not be actively cleaning their own homes and their cleaning supplies for my building include a Swiffer wetjet, magic erasers, latex gloves, and paper towels. One cannot conceivably clean something well with those kind of supplies.

I picked up a couple of those little green scrubby pads a couple of months ago and brought them to work.  Last week, I decided I'd had enough of the grit hanging out in the bathroom so I wore my jeans to work on Friday, put old newspapers down on the floor, donned my latex gloves and set to work with my little scrubpad.

It took a few minutes, but I began to realize the tile grout was not originally black in color. That was a rather disturbing moment and I spent the next 45 minutes scrubbing with pads, scraping with an old pen, and pouring liberal amounts of Pinesol all over the place. I need a sandblaster.

Earlier this week, I tried bleach and a scrub brush but had to give up when I realized there is no ventilation in that bathroom and spent the rest of the day with bleach clinging to my nosehairs.

So today I brought in three boxes of baking soda, a gallon of vinegar, an industrial size scrub brush thingy with a long handle, and my mom's wet/dry vac. Maybe I should wait for the main branch to send over my requested cleaning supplies, but damn. That grout is BLACK. I can't take it. That's fucking nasty. Totally and completely. My house isn't clean by any means, but we're not walking around on forty-year-old mold.

Anyway, the baking soda/vinegar idea was a little more successful that the previous bleach and Pine-sol attempts, but only by a little. It's going to take a lot of scrubbing. My neighbor, who works for a professional cleaning company, suggested muraic acid, but changed her mind when I said there wasn't any ventilation for the bathroom.

So those are my current updates on my cleaning supply habit. I like baking soda a lot.

The End.

P.S. It's probably going to be a busy weekend with two birthday parties, a band trip to chaperone, and a house to clean other than my own so I'll holler at you hookers later. I did want to throw this link out there before I forgot, though.

http://www.5dollardinners.com/

Someone over at Free Jinger suggested it to me. At first, I was worried I was going to be flipping through a lot of tater tot casseroles and hot dog soup recipes, but it doesn't look too bad though I still haven't had time to seriously investigate it. I plan to give it a good onceover before my next grocery shopping trip, though. If anyone tries any of the recipes, let me know how they are.

Speaking of food, we tried Jalapeno and Potato Soup a couple of days ago. It was okay. Not as thick as I would have preferred since I have these weird texture issues. Plus it gave me some of the funkiest gas I've had in ages. It was bad. Really, really bad. Frankly, the recipe wasn't good enough for me to put up with that kind of smell wafting from me arse. Chili, yes. Potatoes, no.