Defining Irony One Mop At A Time

One of the very first "needless" expenses that got cut when I decided to stay home full time with Joshua was our cleaning lady. The rationale for doing so was quite sound and, in all honesty, I was kind of looking forward to being in charge of it myself again. Because no matter how good someone else is at cleaning, they never really clean things the way you do. So, early in January, I eyed our cleaning supplies and refilled those that needed refilling and refreshed others that needed refreshing and among those purchases was a container of Swiffer Wet refills.

I bought a Swiffer fairly early in the history of Swiffers. I remember being totally enthralled at the idea, having completely bought in to the commercials, and pictured myself singing and dancing and twirling my way around the kitchen leaving clean, sparkly floors behind me. Then, when finished, tossing the Swiffer pad away while I whirled about in happiness. Because that's how it always looked in the commercials. I think I used the thing twice before cursing its name and tossing it in the back recesses of the closet. I was pleased, a few years after that, to give my refills to a friend who said they were great for wiping down car dashboards.

However, time very frequently inspires memory loss, so this year I thought again, "What the heck, we'll give it a try."

Sadly, my experience still remains...well...what's the opposite of stellar? See, when you try to Swiffer something in my house, you get a strip about two feet long and one Swiffer wide before you have to change the Swiffer pad because it's clogged with dog hair. Sweeping and vaccuming before Swiffering will buy you an extra foot, maybe foot and a half before a change is needed. But ultimately, all I think a Swiffer does is give you wet, vaguely citrus scented floors. Oh, and your trash smells nice too. Maybe without a long haired dog the story would be different. But for now, the Swiffer has been stashed back in the dark recesses of the closet. And I guess my dashboard will be orange-y-fresh for a while.

So, with a quiet grumble, I switched back to my mop. Eyeing the thing, I realized that it was time to change the sponge head, because I couldn't remember when I had last done so and I was pretty sure that the dirt on it was old enough to walk. Of course, the problem with mops is that you buy one - and you get a refill when you do - but once the original and the refill have been used, you're really just about SOL if you need to find a mop head that's going to fit. Ok, fine. Time for a new mop.

I was actually pretty jazzed about my new mop. And so when I dragged out my bucket and filled it with steaming water and Lysol I was understandably disappointed when the head proved too big to fit in the bucket. Yes, you read that correctly. Well, given that the hot water made the bucket's plastic a little more malleable, I was able to twist and push and eventually got the mop head into the bucket. And the floors did shine and the angels did sing and the ickies were finally removed from the vinyl and the germs were killed. Amen. This was two weeks ago. Tim promised that he'd buy me a bigger bucket.

When I dragged out the mop again last week, I remembered the twisting contortions needed and set about my business but as no new bucket had yet appeared, I figured I'd just make it work again - after all, what could possibly go wrong? If you guessed "irreparably break the new mop by snapping off the wringers" you would be correct! If you further guessed that Tim would show up with a bigger mop bucket later that evening, you would also be correct!

So at Lowes on Saturday, I grabbed another mop (it's like a mop buying extravaganza around here) since Tim was positive that trying to super glue the wringers back on would be an exercise in futility. And this afternoon as I was considering mopping I had to laugh...because the new mop? It fits fine in the old bucket.