Today

Today is Friday, y'all. Fridays are usually dubbed as "no clean" day in my book. It's like my day off from household chores, although sometimes I've been known to do a load of laundry here and there on a Friday. But today - I got a mini cleaning streak in me. It's been brewing for a while. I really want to have a clean house, and I feel better after I clean knowing that everything's in order, but I get so DISCOURAGED because I know I'm just going to have to do everything all over again in a week. And that's just a downer. Ugh.

But back to today.

So instead of cleaning our hardwoods, shining up the stove, or doing something that would noticeably impact the cleanliness of our house to the naked eye...I decided to do something that no one will ever see or know about, but that will make a big difference in the cleanliness of our laundry room.

I cleaned our washer!!!

While surfing the home decor section of pinterest, I became inspired by a blog post that had been done on cleaning out your washing machine. I don't think ours has ever been done. Like as in EVER. I do laundry all the time, but really - who thinks about cleaning something that cleans? I was so inspired that I even took before and after pictures to see if it would really work.

First I lifted the lid to see if it REALLY needed to be clean. I think there was part of me that was still secretly hoping I could suppress this weird cleaning desire that cropped up on a no-clean Friday. But alas - take a look at exhibit A for proof that indeed, our washer needed some TLC:



So I loaded it with hot water and put in 2 cups of white vinegar. It didn't quite fill to the top of the center spin thing, so I used a measuring cup to add in a lot more water. I thought that was probably a dumb idea at the time because surely the washing machine knows its own water limit, but the grossness on the spin thing was still exposed and I knew it needed to come in contact with the water / vinegar mixture to get clean. I set our kitchen timer for 60 min and let the solution work its magic.

After an hour, I let the washer finish the cycle. I put it on the shortest one to speed up the process and get to the next step, which was to fill the washer AGAIN, and this time put in 2 cups of bleach instead of 2 cups of vinegar. Did you know that bleach goes bad? That's what K tells me, and I think it's true - because once I spilled tea on the white shower curtain in B's room and when I washed it with old bleach the stain was still there. So I opened up new bleach and put it in the sink with the stained shower curtain and it came right out. That was a while ago, and I used the same beach in today's cleaning process, so I hope it hasn't since expired - but I digress....

Because of the length of time involved in this project, I definitely lost steam midway through. When I saw the grossness was still on the center spin thing after the vinegar cycle, I started to think, "seriously? why did I even get started on this? I need a nap."

But I somehow mustered up the strength to forge ahead.

I decided to take a sponge and put white vinegar on it and see if I could scrub some of it off. Thankfully, it wasn't too difficult. The bleach might have taken it off, but I felt it better to jump the gun to ensure it would be gone once and for all. In retrospect - instead of going through the entire process, I think I would've just taken the sponge with vinegar to the center spin thing from the get go. Maybe next time. Here is the finished product:



Wow. This is the longest post I've written in a long time. And it's about cleaning our washing machine. Just go with it...