Scouring
Sweetie had grown up using rags, a method I believe she has secretly always thought superior, but for the sake of our relationship has decided to consent. Rags never made sense to me, where was the fun in that? Sure you could wash them when they got dirty instead of throwing them out, but they didn’t have any abrasions. I tried, for a while, just using the thin green abrasive ones, similar in feel to the backing on those Scotch Bright yellow ones, the ones for Heavy Duty pots and pans, but they don’t hold enough water for my liking. That, and the fact that little bits of egg or flour or peanut butter would get trapped and it would retire to the top of the sink, too new to throw away but too disgusting to feel comfortable using again.
For some reason earlier this month Sweetie decided that the only way to get the toilet REALLY clean was to pull out an old box of S.O.S. pads hidden in the back underneath the sink, and to scour the hell out of it. And you know, somehow her using those little steel-soap pads flipped a switch. Sure I had known about them before. My mother, in fact, used them when I was a kid, just like every other kids parents probably did, but I never really got it until Sweetie took the plunge.
As Sweetie I’m sure would tell you, I’m not a neat freak by any stretch of the imagination. Though I will do my steps of the cleaning-up-the-trailer or taking-out-the-garbage dance, I’m quite comfortable with a mess level that is up a little higher than hers is.
When we left college, Sweetie and I took jobs cleaning up the college dorms trying to raise enough money to move to Seattle and get an apartment. It was slow tedious work, where everything you cleaned would get inspected twice and where you learned that toothbrushes were great at cleaning the cracks of refrigerator door molding, how to really clean a stove, where old pee gathers and rots in the bathroom, and a number of other facts that I’m not sure my stomach is ready to go though right now. It did, however, set a precedent for both Sweetie and I to realize just how clean, clean can be.
I thought of the broiler pan, with its hard baked on enamel finish and the blackened burnt-ness left from the last time we had steaks, or the time before when we had fish. Would the pads work on that? I had to find out.
Somehow SOS pads have just the right amount of scrub-to-clean ratio needed for me to be entertained for the half hour or so it took to clean it. I would have gone on to the Pyrex right then if my hand hadn’t started cramping up due to the pinching position you have to hold for the pads to be effective.
I got to the Pyrex last night, and for one brief shining moment, all the brown baked on mess is gone, replaced by a look it hasn’t had since new. A look where you can see though the edges and the handles and it shines from the overhead sink light. I wanted to attack the oven-door glass but again my hands aren’t strong enough.
I can wait. I have a half-full box waiting with my name on it and I’m not afraid to use it.
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