My original goal was to complete my list of 1000 goals by my birthday, however when it took longer than I anticipated, I realized that some goals might be accomplished before the list was complete. The first of them being #490 "Buy a floor steamer to clean the floors with", which I completed on June 27th.
Most of my home is wood or ceramic tile flooring, and that means mopping. I HATE mopping, and in fact I'm ashamed to admit that during my marriage I very rarely mopped my floors. My ex-husband, he was an excellent mopper, although I do not know if he enjoyed it or just put up with doing it. He was terribly anal about it, but did a wonderful job, and either way I didn't have to do it so I was happy. He was a bit of a nazi about not walking on the floors for like an hour after he mopped, which often left us trapped on the islands of carpeted surfaces or marooned on chairs or sofas begging to be allowed a pass to go to the bathroom. Heaven forbid if one of us snuck across the wet floor while he wasn't looking. He could spot even the faintest footprint on his pristine floor and boy did we get it then.
At any rate, divorce robbed me of my mopper and now I was solely responsible for cleaning all those hard floor surfaces. Someday I hope to carpet more of the house, but for now, I wanted an easier way to clean without dragging out the mop and bucket. Friends at work told me about the floor steamer, an electric unit that heats water and uses fabric pads and steam to clean your floors. No messy bucket, no drippy mop, and the pads are washable. How easy is that?? I wanted one.
As my birthday approached my mother was discussing alternative gift options with me. Now let me tell you, I'm very pro-consumable gifts. I love things that can be used up and are gone, or are things that the recipient needs and can use often in a real context. I'm the kind of girl that is happy with a vacuum cleaner for Christmas or a gift card for an oil change for my birthday. My mother was suggesting that she hire her house cleaner to come and clean my house for me. Single moms could really use this, between work and kids and homework and kid activities and everything else, housework is often a challenge. It's a wonderful idea, however I'm kind of weird about letting other people in my house. I wasn't prepared to have a house cleaner, but I didn't know how to explain this to my mother. Then it hit me, like the old saying about fish and fishing, clean a woman's house and she will have clean floors for a day, buy her a floor steamer and she will have clean floors for life. Or something like that.
So I informed my mother that I was planning on purchasing a floor steamer and that if she was willing what I would really love to have for my birthday would be a gift card to go towards the purchase of the steamer I had been eyeing. She agreed and for my birthday I received a pretty pink gift card. My boss at work had also given me a very generous gift check and together I was able to purchase my floor steamer with no cost to me!!
I ended up purchasing the Shark Steam Pocket Mop and I already love it. The head swivels so you can use both sides of the pads, it has a nice size water tank and I was able to do most of my floors without refilling, and the texture of the pad was great for scrubbing sticky spots from the kitchen floor. Overall, I might just end up enjoying the time to clean the floors now. I'm already looking forward to disposing of my old mops, and no longer having to pull out three different ones to clean the different floors in my house. As an added bonus the steamer uses only water to clean the floors (I use distilled water as I have hard water) so there is no smelly chemicals making the whole house smell like insane lemons or exuberant faux pine forests. As someone with a sensitive nose, I really appreciate that!
A small goal I know, but it still felt great to cross one off the list (even if the list wasn't complete yet at the time). Every time I clean my floors I'll think of my parents and my boss who gave me the gift of clean floors by helping me buy my Shark. Thank you!!
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