Can you get carpal tunnel syndrome from overuse of a sponge?

Day 1: Eat-in kitchen

To say that our house has a "breakfast nook" makes it seem much larger and more sophisticated than it really is. When I think of a breakfast nook, I imagine a gazebo-like outcropping of a fifty-year-old home, likely with a window seat, looking out into an immaculate backyard flower garden. Our home is not fifty years old and has no gazebo, window seat, or flower garden. What we DO have is a large kitchen with a bar across the middle of it. On the far side of the bar we have our everyday table and chairs (for my husband, my girls, and myself) and a well-used high chair (for Baby Boy).

I hope I'm not alone in saying that this particular portion of our home is always dirty. Always. Almost without exception. I could sweep it every day (at times I have, actually) and still find unidentifiable crumbs on the floor a short hour later. The sides of the table where the girls sit are sort of permanently encrusted with a combination of peanut butter, pancake syrup, and goldfish crumbs. The Beast does her part at cleaning up large table scraps, but her attentions can't begin to make up for a thorough cleaning.

The Action Plan:

1. Take down and wash curtains.
2. Clean blinds.
3. Wash windows.
4. Remove and wash window screens.
5. Dust wall art and wine rack.
6. Scour clean booster seat and high chair (washing covers as appropriate).
7. Clean chairs and table, then polish.
8. Empty baker's rack, thoroughly wipe surfaces and drawers, and reorganize contents.
9. Wipe floorboards.
10. Sweep and mop.

That process took about five hours, with appropriate breaks in the middle for feeding the baby, changing diapers (on Cuddles AND Baby Boy), and fixing snacks and lunches. It wasn't as easy as I expected, and I was unpleasantly surprised at the amount of dirt I removed.

I performed the bulk of my cleaning with apple cider vinegar. A friend had told me that it was a good cleaning agent without the toxicity of ammonia, so I went with it.  I had an enormous bottle that would have been appropriate for doing bicep curls; by the end of the morning, it was empty.  As I wiped down an area and the water got too dirty, which was often, I'd dump it out and start fresh.

The tracks of the windows may have been the nastiest part of the entire room. Granted, they are sort of on the outside of the house, so what I was wiping up was literally dirt blown in from the back yard.  Oh, and a few dead spiders and a small, desiccated frog.  I was able to clean the window tracks easily enough, but I ran into a snag when I couldn't figure out how to remove the window screens.  This site explained how to clean them, and it sounded pretty straightforward, but I will need to wait until I can get My Love to remove them later.  I also cleaned the windows themselves the "traditional" way, with Windex (the generic brand, anyway).  I found some advice about cleaning windows with a squeegee here.  It sounded smart, but like a lot of work, so I skipped it.  As it turns out, Windex really just seems to rearrange the streaks, so I may have to return to the squeegee method anyway.

I washed the curtains, and was appalled at the dust that came off.  We hung the curtains (homemade by my mother-in-law) when we moved into the house four years ago.  And they haven't come down since.  Though they were dusty, it came off easily in the wash.

I also removed the window blinds and tried to give them a good cleaning, using several different methods which I'll detail in another post.  Let's just say that it was a complete and utter failure.

Dusting of the light fixtures, wall art, and baker's rack were uneventful, quick, and easy.  It's really amazing how much cleaner the room looked after cleaning just those items!

Cuddles's booster seat is perpetually dirty, and I had resigned myself to the face that it would always be that way.  However, with diligent effort (and no instruction manual) I figured out how to remove and machine-wash the straps, then scrub the surface with apple cider vinegar followed by a Lysol wipe.  It now looks brand-new!

The breakfast room table is significantly older than I am.  We got the table when my grandfather passed away, and he's had it as long as I can remember.  It's solid wood, but a bit rickety, and the stain has definitely seen better days.  One of the most difficult aspects of the table is the drop leafs on each end.  Unbeknownst to me, every spill and crumb that could manage it had worked its way into the crevices.  When I dropped the leaves, I encountered "gunk" that I had to scrub off with the textured side of my well-used kitchen sponge.

Sweeping the floor didn't turn up anything more interesting than what a mom would find on her kitchen floor on a daily basis.  After the sweeping, though, I bit the bullet.  After hearing a friend tell me that she used to scrub her kitchen floor on her hands and knees every day (before she had kids, she admitted), I decided I needed to try it at least once in my life.  I wiped down the baseboards with my trusty apple cider vinegar; according to this website it's something that should be done weekly.  I'm not sure it's every been done.  I understandably came up with a lot of dirt.  Afterwards I scrubbed the floor with a sponge, hitting the sticky spots that I would normally miss with a mop.  And I have to say, the kitchen floor almost sparkled.

I moved all the furniture and curtains back into their places and was proud.  The house had that "clean" smell that I craved, and one room was as spic-and-span as I could hope to make it. Today went so well that I have the motivation to continue!