Bucket-Free

Confession: I hate mopping. And by hate, I mean really, truly, intensely, abhorrently hate, even more than onions or politics or the aggravating need to shower occasionally regularly. Part of the reason is that I have a two-year-old, and two-year-olds see clean floors as some sort of nuclear threat that MUST BE STOPPED! as quickly and with as much ketchup as possible. The other reason is that mopping our house involves rolling up the rugs, relocating the furniture, soaking a rag in a bucket of hot, soapy water, scrubbing the floor with said rag, ringing it out, repeating until my spine begins to audibly plead for mercy, and keeping my feet and those of my active child off the floor until it dries sometime next spring. I have a favorite saying for times like these: “Yea, though our floor become a 24-hour bacterial orgy, I shall never mop again, amen.”

Today, though, everything changed. Behold, the Swiffer mop! If my husband knew how in love I am with this contraption, he would no longer leave the two of us alone without a chaperone (preferably Bob Jones himself). Disposable cleaning cloths! Swivel head! Sleek, bucket-free silhouette! For the first time in months, our kitchen floor is squeaky clean!

(And here we end with a technical discussion about the meaning of “is,” since, technically, I’m using it more in the “was” sense. As in, “Our kitchen floor was squeaky clean for at least five minutes until Natalie entered with the pickle juice, but good for her, because that kind of unprecedented cleanness just had to be stopped.”)