Just To Lighten Things Up A Bit . . .

If only we could apply space technology to cleaning...
by Amy Meade
Happy News Citizen Journalist

House cleaning is serious business. Just look at the myriad of products on the market designed to make cleaning easier and quicker for today's busy lifestyles. My question is, do they really streamline the housekeeping process, or is it strictly advertising?
Let's take a look:

1. Wipes

The Premise: Each disposable cloth is pre-saturated with cleanser and then sold in a dispenser that allows the user to remove one cloth at a time, thus making it easy to give the house a quick clean before heading out the door to work or to run errands. According to their advertising, it also makes it easy and 'fun' for the whole family to maintain a clean environment.

The Real World: The bathroom-oriented wipes make my counter and faucet sparkle, but it's difficult to get excited when the sink is dotted with toothpaste that has hardened to the point that one needs an ice pick to chip it off. If manufacturers want to help me keep the vanity area clean, they either need to add an abrasive substance to the cleaning formula, or add Teflon to toothpaste so that it doesn't stick to surfaces. Of course, that may result in the toothpaste not adhering very well to the toothbrush, but it's not as if it stays there anyway, otherwise there wouldn't be gobs of it in the sink. And, yes, I hear the health conscious crowd wondering if Teflon is good for our teeth. Maybe it isn't, but could it really be any worse than Coca Cola?

As for the furniture wipes, they smell nice. A little too nice, as my cats proceeded to lick the furniture, resulting in a coffee table that smells of orange, salmon and whitefish and proving that my cats are not finicky eaters, but true epicures, as they are aware that citrus, even in the form of furniture wax, makes a wonderful accompaniment to seafood.

Pleasant aroma aside, however, I'm not too sure the wipes saved me much time, as spraying furniture polish on a rag isn't exactly a labor-intensive process. Really want to help me save time? Make furniture that has remote controlled trap doors to hide knick-knacks. When you're ready to dust, simply press a button and everything on the tabletop gets lowered into the body of the table itself. Precious items are secured to the moving platform. Free-roaming junk is discarded, thereby leaving a clutter-free cleaning surface while simultaneously teaching the family not to leave their things lying around the house.

As for wipes encouraging the rest of the family to aid in the cleaning process? All I have to say is even the Brady's, a family whose biggest crisis was figuring out who broke Carol's hideous vase, had a maid named Alice.

2. Specialized Mops

The Premise: One mop can do wet or dry cleaning, depending on the cloth you attach to the mop head. Cloths can be disposed after cleaning, thus ending smelly mop syndrome as well as the need for multiple mops.

The Real World: The mop does a great job on my hardwood floors, but it needs an attachment that cleans area rugs so that I don't have to drag my vacuum cleaner out of the closet. Anyone who does a good deal of cleaning can tell you that although hardwood floors get dusty, area rugs are the true dirt catchers of the house, as they attract dust, grime and pet hair. Likewise, any pet owner can tell you that the type of pet hair that area rugs draw is dependent upon the color of the rug as well as the color of your pet. Light colored pets will relax and, subsequently, shed on dark rugs and furnishings. Dark colored pets will always deposit their hair on light colored rugs and furnishings. Pets with both light and dark shades in their coats will vary their lounging habits to complement whatever tuft of fur has worked its way loose.

What would also assist in the floor cleaning process is if furniture designers started making mop and vacuum-friendly furniture. We all have at least one piece of extremely bulky furniture that cannot be moved without the aid of several dollies, a circus strongman and three elephants. Approximately 90 % of the time, this piece of furniture (usually an entertainment center or china closet) has two rather substantial legs separated by a narrow space. And 100% of the time, this space is too narrow for a mop or vacuum, or even your arm, to enter, yet is just high enough off the floor to allow visitors to see the dust accumulating beneath it. If you're truly lucky, at just the right angle, at a precise time of day, you're treated with a view of a landscape so vast and dusty it could be confused with 1930's Oklahoma. This space is also the black hole for pet toys, candy wrappers, crumbs, spare change, your daughter's missing hair barrettes, and, quite possibly, Jimmy Hoffa.

Solution? Do away with the space completely or, at the very least, make it wider so that it can accommodate something larger than a broomstick, measuring tape or that bmboo backscratcher you brought back from your trip to Acapulco.

3. Automatic Toilet Cleaners

Premise: Drop the cleaning tab into your toilet tank and the specialized formula will keep your toilet bowl clean, without scrubbing, for up to 4 months.

The Real World: Keep a toilet bowl clean, without scrubbing, for up to 4 months? Listen closely. Do you hear that sound? It's the collective laughter of mothers of small boys everywhere. Honestly, who was the test group for this product? A convent of elderly nuns on a low fiber diet?
True, the tablet produces a nice fragrance upon flushing, but that only lasts for the first few days and, eventually, the only proof of the tablet's existence is a bowl of vivid blue water. This vivid blue is supposed to be an indication that the tablet is working, but it is merely a subterfuge. Like fair-skinned people who wear white to make themselves look tan (i.e. me), or black to look skinnier (me, again), the blue tricks the brain into thinking, "Gee, the water is blue. The toilet must be clean." The blue camouflages hard water stains and unsightly discolorations, which, under normal, non-blue conditions would leave the average user to contemplate their origin and chemical composition.

Personally, making my toilet blue does not convince me of its cleanliness. And the bright green color that is produced upon usage merely reminds most parents of the time their toddler threw lime Jello into the swimming pool. Want to make toilet cleaning easier? Forget about toilets that flush themselves - they tend to frighten everyone anyway - and manufacture commodes that, when the lid is closed, sterilize themselves with a mixture of hot water, steam and bleach. That's the way Mason jars are sterilized, and if it's good enough for vessels that hold food, well…

In conclusion, mankind possesses the knowledge to make housekeeping easier; it simply needs to apply it. My suggestion: take the money being spent on the space program and allocate it to home economic research. Let's clean up the planet we already have before we start littering the Milky Way. After all, your husband's dirty sweat socks are bad enough when they're lying on the bedroom floor, let alone floating an inch under your nose in the zero gravity of space.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
This story was produced by Happynews Citizen Journalist Amy Meade. Amy Patricia Meade is a freelance writer whose first novel, Million Dollar Baby, is to be released on April 1, 2006. To find out more information on Amy and her book, please visit her Web site.

This story was produced by a Happynews Citizen Journalist.

For more information on contributing to Happynews, click here.