Lesson #1 If you want a clean and sanitary home: don't have children.

They are not conducive to clean or sanitary in any way. In fact, neither are men, but they can be trained better and easier than children.

I've figured out why kids dorm rooms are messy and, well, just plain gross. Low and behold:

It's all their parents fault!

This epiphany came to me as I was cleaning the kitchen sink today. I discovered all this ICK around the little handle thingy on the faucet. WHAT IS THAT SHIT? OH. MY. GOD! I was horrified!
Then I decided the faucet was running like crap and had to take it apart to fix it. Guess what? It wasn't broken at all! I Just needed to clean it!
No one ever taught me that you had to clean in THERE. It is NOT in the Wiki either. I checked

MY MOTHER HAS FAILED ME! It's all HER fault!

She didn't tell me that I had to do this stuff! Actually, I am pretty sure she never did this stuff. WHY didn't she have sink crud? Who cleaned that stuff out of there?
Never once in my life did I ever see my mother cleaning IN THERE. I never saw her take the faucet apart. I never saw her soak the shower head when she cleaned the bathroom. She didn't have to do these things!

The sink is just the tip of this iceberg. I've discovered a whole plethora of things I KNOW my mother never touched.

I never knew you had to clean inside the seal on the refrigerator. Did you know this? Have you done that lately? If you haven't, go lift it  up... You'll be SHOCKED.
While we are on the subject of the refrigerator, I am pretty sure my mother never had to clean footprints out of the bottom of  her refrigerator either. HOW do footprints get in the bottom of my refrigerator? WHY does anyone in my house feel the need to STAND in the bottom of the fridge? There are no small children here. The smallest is 13 and 5'3" tall. He can see the top shelf in the fridge. Believe me, there isn't enough there that he  has to look over and around anything to find what he's looking for either, so let's just not even go there.
How about UNDER the refrigerator? DEAR LORD IN HEAVEN. My mother never taught me that you have to clean under there!! And I am pretty sure SHE never did that. Where does that sticky gooey nasty stuff come from?

I will admit, I am not the neatest housekeeper by FAR. I believe in sanitary (for the most part) but clutter is a fact of life around here. On any given day there are 3 teens still living at home as well as one overgrown male child/husband. I will admit he's pretty well trained and it's only taken me 20 years!!! In the immortal words of my mother "dog hair is a condiment" around here and cat hair is part of the charming decor. I can't keep it gone. Feathers are another of those quirky things that are a fact of life around here. I can't keep up with them and I've allowed myself to let them become a part of "normal." I am OK with that. I am not OK with gross, crud, slime, grime or anything with creepy crawlies in it.

Speaking of gross, that brings me to the toilet. What gets under the toilet seat on a daily basis? I am NOT OK with this. How does THAT get there? I can see how boys could pee up under the seat, but it seems to me that they'd then have a wet seat on their britches so they'd have to make sure it's 'tucked' down in there right. Don't forget that I don't have little boys either. I have 3/4 to full  grown men/children living here.  How do they poop up on the underside of the seat? That boggles my mind. No wonder there is never any toilet paper at 3 am when stumble in there to pee. They've had to use it all to wipe all of that poop off their bizarrely misshapen butts. I just find this to be nearly impossible. Yet every day or so when I wipe down the toilet there's poop back there. I can almost conceive of how this might happen if you were grotesquely fat and... well, that image is not one that I really want to have in my brain, let alone share with anyone. No one here is grotesquely fat. I'll admit I am over weight, but at a size 12 I am not grotesquely fat. Or at least I like to think so.

Then there is the dishwasher. OH. MY. LORD. Clean that seal once in a while. Heck, just clean the inside of the dishwasher. This WASHES my dishes. WHY do I have to wash it? It doesn't make sense.
The washing machine and dryer too! Those are the bane of my existence!!! The well trained husband does almost every stitch of laundry in our house. I do the occasional load but, it's not often. The one time a week that I might use them they are covered in dirt and crud and and and... I don't know what that stuff is!! Low and behold, you also have to clean out the drum and innards of the washer. This does make a LITTLE sense to me. Think soap scum ring in the bath tub after a day of making mud pies. Did you know there are products specifically made to clean your washer?

Speaking of cleaning products... WHAT THE HECK??? Thankfully I have learned the error of my very expensive cleaning habits since adding parrots to our home. They're a bit on the delicate side and therefore I have switched to using white vinegar for my main cleaning 'chemical.' Vinegar however, doesn't smell so good so every once in a while I get the urge for something to smell pretty and buy one of those cleaners. I don't understand WHY people continue to clean with them. They leave more residue than the dirt layer I was trying to clean up. And that residue seems to suck dirt to it like glue so you have to clean again-only faster! Which just lays down ANOTHER layer of the residue. Not only do they leave a buildup, they also work like crap. I can soak bird poop in a little vinegar, water, lemon juice and peroxide and it wipes right out of the cage. Not so easy with Mr. Clean, Pine Sol or the other myriad of cleaning products I've tried. Short of oven cleaner (which I haven't tried because of the delicate birds) there isn't anything that works as well as good ol' vinegar.  The smell can be dealt with if you mix it with lemon juice, peroxide and water. T Throw a little baking soda in there and you can clean everything and anything. Like Sink Crud. And bird poop will put ANY cleaner to the test. That stuff is the consistency of tar with the sticking power of super glue.

I feel betrayed and let down. I can't believe my mother didn't teach me these things. I really think she secretly had some cleaning lady who came in when I was at school and did these nasty jobs. My mother refuses to cop to a plea on that one and insists that SHE was the queen of clean and that she DID do these things. I don't believe her for a minute.

I wonder what it will cost to have a cleaning lady come in and do these things?