Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice...right?

In the old nursery rhyme, little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice.  Well, today I deep-cleaned the girls' room, and let me tell you...there was not a bit of any of that in sight.  What DID I find?  Spiders, snails, and puppy dog [hair].  I think the writer of the nursery rhyme was confused.

Action Plan:
1.  Clean light fixture
2.  Dust all surfaces
3.  Clean window
4.  Wipe down doors
5.  Clean baseboards
6.  Vacuum

First of all:  the light fixture was done immediately, so I had no excuse to say later that I forgot about it.

I dusted the room, and it seemed like it was more dusty than other parts of the house.  It also seems to be the warmest room in the house because of a large window, so I wonder whether that has something to do with the air conditioning unit's attempt to work in overdrive.

The window took more scrubbing than the ones in other rooms have.  The Best likes (liked?) to sit with her head propped on the window sill and her nose pressed to the glass, which meant a lot of dirt and smudges to deal with.  It was when I opened the window to clean the tracks, though, that I got my biggest surprise.  The girls' window sits just over our "garden" -- a small patch of mulched dirt with a few sago palms and flowers growing in it.  My theory is that the bugs, frogs, and grime I found in the window originated in the garden.  The window track was coated with some sort of green slime that probably came from the sprinkler.  I know that we have lots of little frogs around, especially in the summer; several met their ends stuck between the window glass and the screen of the girls' bedroom.  And, yes, there were dead spiders and a snail.  (I have no idea how the snail got there; however, I have seen one in the garden before, so my theory is that s/he somehow climbed the brick and entered in at a crevice.)

I pulled out a new tool when wiping down the doors today:  my Up & Up "magic eraser" from Target.  Those things are fantastic for removing fingerprints, pencil and crayon marks, and muddy streaks from both doors and walls.

Cleaning the baseboards was uneventful, but things got interesting again when it was time to vacuum.  Cuddles and Mini-me entered the room, and they both wanted to help me vacuum the floor.  There was almost a fight over it.  This is the documentation:  when they are teenagers and try to shirk their chores, I will remind them that there once was a day when they fought for the privilege of doing them!