{"id":3480,"date":"2010-01-04T13:55:09","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T18:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=3480"},"modified":"2010-01-04T14:06:48","modified_gmt":"2010-01-04T19:06:48","slug":"in-which-the-dog-hair-finally-snaps-her-last-bit-of-sanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2010\/01\/04\/in-which-the-dog-hair-finally-snaps-her-last-bit-of-sanity\/","title":{"rendered":"In which the dog hair finally snaps her last bit of sanity"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>here’s an old Dan Hill song (what, you don’t do early 70s Canadian folk rockers?) that has the lyric, “Freedom takes on new meaning \/ When you have a family of five.” With all due respect to Mr Hill, I’d like to posit that the following is also true: keeping the house clean takes on a whole new meaning when you have a family of five.<\/p>\n

As you might remember, we got new laminate floors installed on the main floor at the beginning of December, and I’ve since spent a lot of time thinking about keeping the place clean. There’s no doubt that the house is now freer of dust, dog hair and crumbs than it was before, because instead of having these things migrate deep into the pile of the (horrendously ugly) sky-blue-washed-out-to-grey carpet, I’m now sweeping them up on a daily (sometimes twice-daily) basis. Was there really this much smutzch floating around before, or have I suddenly become hyper-vigilant to it as it dust-bunnies itself into every corner? <\/p>\n

I’ve become alarmingly obsessive about cleaning the floors. (Not, for whatever it’s worth, much else in the house. So far.) With something like a missionary zeal, I sweep the main floor in search of every stray dog hair and crumbled bit of goldfish. Once upon a time, Procter and Gamble sent me an e-mail asking me to evangelize their Swiffer line in exchange for free product and I declined with a superior sense of derision. And today, I will tell you free of any commercial endorsement whatsoever that I am ridiculously infatuated with my newly acquired Swiffer vac. Seriously, why did you not tell me about this before? I have been freed from the tyranny of the dust pan, and any of you who have spent any time at all watching tufts of golden-retriever-German-shedder dog hair floating lazily over the back of the dust pan or dancing out of the bin on the faintest hint of breeze must IMMEDIATELY set out to acquire one. I also bought a new canister vac at the Boxing Day sales ($200 marked down to $139, with special pet hair attachment!) to replace the 10 year old Kenmore upright that was literally held together with duct tape, but it’s the zippy little Swiffer vac that really floats my boat. There is something supremely satisfying in seeing those stray dog hairs get sucked up instead of skittering away from the broom that moves me deeply.<\/p>\n

In another life, I remember reading an article in some woman’s magazine about housekeeping shortcuts, and I knew that it was so not <\/em>the kind of article for me because it suggested that you don’t have to move the sofa every single time you vacuum. I remember skimming past the rest of the article in search of the next one, with a puzzled little thought bubble over my head that said, “You’re supposed to move the sofa when you vacuum?”<\/p>\n

Fast forward three kids and one laminate floor and here I am, moving the sofa about every third time I swifferize. By all things holy, I WILL conquer the dog hair and the crumbs, I swear it.<\/p>\n

(There is a small, concerned voice in my head that is suggesting, in the carefully modulated voice you reserve for the craziest of people, that maybe I’m spending a little bit too much time thinking about the swiffer vac. You think?)<\/p>\n

And since I’m rambling about cleaning, you know what else I do now that I once scoffed over in derision? I wash the kitchen floor by hand. It’s just easier that way. Next think you know, I’ll be ironing the bed sheets. It’s a slippery slope.<\/p>\n

I wish I could declare with a smug sense of self-satisfaction that at least the floors are so clean you could eat off of them, but, well, the dog just shed another half pound of hair, I just noticed at least a tablespoon of coffee grounds that skittered out of the filter, the baby crushed a stray goldfish into powder and someone’s just tracked no-salt-ice-melter from the front hall way half way across the dining room. <\/p>\n

And Sisyphus thought the rock was a bitch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s an old Dan Hill song (what, you don’t do early 70s Canadian folk rockers?) that has the lyric, “Freedom takes on new meaning \/ When you have a family of five.” With all due respect to Mr Hill, I’d like to posit that the following is also true: keeping the house clean takes on … Continue reading “In which the dog hair finally snaps her last bit of sanity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-is-all-about-me","category-life-the-universe-and-everything"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3480"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3490,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3480\/revisions\/3490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}