“Surely not!”

This is what I thought when I heard TL say that if she wanted her kitchen floor to stay clean she had to get down on it with a scrub brush every week or so.  With soap and water?  Hot water, even.  And the baseboards?  Every other month. Surely not!

Then, when I was first introduced to “green cleaning,” the girl teaching us said that, “hot soapy water will take care of most everything.”  She can’t be serious.  Why would anyone do that when there was superior spraying and wiping options?

Then, I started cheating off Montessori schools to keep my kids educationally entertained in the other room.  They are big on teaching the children to be independent and allowing them to follow their own interests, which in preschool tends toward scrubbing and sweeping and other household chores.  Weird, huh?  So, each week, I’ve been introducing a pile of Montessori activities to my kids.  One week, it was counter scrubbing, which is also table scrubbing, floor scrubbing, chair scrubbing, what-have-you.  The instructions started with, “Almost nobody cleans this way anymore, but it’s a wonderful activity that young children love…”

1.  Fill bowl with warm water and grated soap or small amount of detergent.

2.  Dip scrub brush.

3.  Scrub surface in small circles, starting from the left top corner and moving to the right and down like reading a page.

4.  Wipe off suds with rag.

5.  Rinse rag and refill bowl with clean water.

6.  Continue wiping and wringing out rag in bowl until you feel no more soap on surface.

7.  Wipe dry with towel.

8.  Drop your teeth because your counter never got this clean with the old spray and wipe method.

*Nobody* cleans like this anymore?  WHY?  I’ve been scrubbing my whole house!  Check out my bathroom floor.  I scrubbed a section so you could see the diff between the grouts.  Can I tell you how many  expensive products I used on that grout?  And HOT SOAP AND WATER AND A SCRUB BRUSH IS WHAT WORKS????

SURELY NOT!