Wednesday, August 22, 2007

The Manly Art of Cleaning: Part 2

As luck would have it, my vacuum does not pick up cat hair. It does not even move it. This means I need to rake my floor to get the cat hair. I am not kidding. I have a sponge mop with no sponge attached. I rake the floor with the edge to ball up the cat hair so I can pick it up.

After 30-odd minutes of raking, I had a bag of cat hair and had broken a sweat. Vacuuming at this point is sort of a ritual. There really is not much to pick up, so it is more about making the neat lines on the floor. A floor has not been cleaned unless there are lines.

Mmmmm, lines.

I should invent a kind of carpet that has lines built in. It would always look freshly vacuumed. Granted, it would probably have to be made with concrete, but that is a small price to pay for having a perfect floor.

So I managed to finish vacuuming. The floor was immaculate. Well, lacking any obvious toxic waste at least. I am sure that once my back is turned, my cat will immediately repopulate the area with hair. This is all part of the circle of life.

Tomorrow: The Bathroom

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's a type of carpet fresh that's supposed to help lift pet hair from the carpet, you should look in to it. saved me a lot of trouble getting my lab's hair out of the carpet and off the couch. (dang dog)

-meggu-

Anonymous said...

Be overjoyed. You have one cat with loose fur. I have 3 dogs, expontially increasing in size from 40# pounds with short fur, through the 85# with medium fur, all the way to wooly mammoth which some people recoginize as 150 pounds of St. Bernard. I also have 9 cats, one of which is named Lucifer. This is not because he is evil, or black, but becasue he has Loose Fur. We know it's him, because he's the only all-black one. I also have 2 ferrets. If they shed, it's not a problem, but they do contribute to general mayhem when allowed out of the cage. Also, one of the wallabies (yea, really) is allowed in the house, a problem I am atempting to rectify. Luckily, my wife des the vacuuming. Every other time she vacuums, I repair the the vacuum cleaner. It is inevitably jammed with fur. Dog fur, cat fur, feret fur, wallaby fur, who knows, someday I'll probably find zebra fur. Perhaps it's a good thing your vacuum doesn't pick up fur. Do you know how to repair a vacuum? I'm just glad my wife has already gotten to the 'W' in the alaphabet, and zebras can't be ridden...

Jason Janicki said...

Thanks for the advice about the Carpet Fresh. I'll check into it.

OH MY GOD! You must have 400 pounds of animals in your house. I take it back, raking the carpet for half-an-hour isn't so bad. You win.

Do you happen to live in Australia? I'm just curious about the wallabies.

Anonymous said...

400 pounds? Gotta go add them up... Could be, because the horses don't live with us, we board them... :p
But no, I live near Detroit. Michigan. Hmm... calculator came up with 384 pounds... but that doesn't count the 15# rabbit or the 50# Wallaby in the backyard. or the 2,000# of horses, of course, of course...

Jason Janicki said...

I was sixteen pounds off the mark. Not bad for a guess off the top of my head.

Never been to Michigan. I have relatives in Illinois and have visited a couple times. It was hot, humid, and there were tons of mosquitos. Still, had a lot of fun.

Anonymous said...

Excellent guess, I couldn't have done better. (Hence the calculator program on the computer...) " hot, humid, and there were tons of mosquitos." You sure you were in Illinois? Sounds just like Michigan, the mosquito is our state bird...

(Yes still me, decided to be less anonymous.)