I Curse you, Window Blinds!

Need some spring cleaning done, but can't seem to find the motivation to actually accomplish that overwhelming to-do list you created months ago?

Just do what I did- invite a butt load of people over to your house for a BBQ.

(I happen to enjoy having people over, just so you know. I didn't get to entertain for years, due to our having no friends/or a house for a few years. I'm jumping on this opportunity...but now, of course, I have kids. Which means, my house is a pit of filth and disease. This is OK for most days. Not so great for entertaining.)

Your house will be clean in just a few days. Like super clean. You will clean things that you normally wouldn't even glance at. Like, when scrubbing the kitchen floor, you notice the wall behind your kitchen table looks a little sticky, you will scrub down your wall. Then, after noticing how clean that wall looks, next to all the other walls, you will scrub down every wall. After doing the walls, you notice that you didn't even finish the floor. While down on the floor, you see the grime on the baseboards...and so it begins again.

Or, when you see the front door, full of kids muddy paw prints and your husbands dirty garage hands, you know that it has to be wiped down before someone comes over and has to touch that door again.

I'm guessing most people wouldn't look at my front door and say, "My goodness, do a bunch of dirty, blind zombies live here?"

Once you get started seeing the underlying filth, you can't seem to stop seeing it everywhere.

This is how came to find out how much I HATE window blinds. You know the ones....the plastic, crappy kind that never seem to gather straight when you try to open a window. The ones that the kids can rip apart or deform permanently, just by peeking through them to spy on the mailman.

They were on the windows of this house when we first moved in. I had plans to remove them and replace all window coverings with some proper window shades. Unfortunately, my bank account didn't agree with my selections. 3 years later, the blinds are still there (or the classy brown towels, if we're talking about my bedroom).

I decided I needed to wash the window in my kitchen, near our table. It has been a home for spiders since the 1950's, so it was well overdue. I noticed, of course, while washing this window, that the blinds could use a good scrubbing as well.

I started by spraying 409 all over them and then trying to wipe them down with a towel. The gray/brown gunk didn't even budge. It was if all the steam from boiling water, frying of oil and dust accumulated over the years and created a mixture that resembled dusty concrete.

I let out a tiny scream of frustration, but then moved them to the bathtub to soak in hot water and assorted chemicals.

 

Ewww....so gross. I see floaters.

I soaked them for a half hour.

 

The crud was still stuck on there.

 

No amount of normal wiping would remove it. I had to grab a sponge and scrub, using actual strength, that I don't have much of. I had to do this to each and every single blind. Individually. It took forever. Or what felt like forever. Bending over a bathtub for a half hour hurts a bit.

 

After all that work, I was so excited to finally have clean blinds! Now I only have 8 more sets to do! Yeah, right...

 

I brought them outside to dry a bit. That's when I noticed that a layer of grime was still on there.

 

I broke down a little, stomped my feet and gave up.

 

There's also a layer of filth coating my bathtub that I have to clean out now.

 

I quit.