Thursday, May 21, 2009

Cleanliness is next to godliness (according to Oprah)

By Rawlins Gilliland

If (as I read Oprah say in her O Magazine at the dentist office) "cleanliness is next to godliness," my home had become overtaken by demons where it had once been heaven’s gate. After 24 years living there, having adopted two indoor/outdoor tomcats and a stray hound the size of a carousel horse whose hair sheds like a canine Rapunzel, I found myself living in a cave where accumulated hairballs emulated some Halloween angel-hair dungeon. This before we even mention the "uncleanable nooks and crevices" throughout any kitchen where buttons and knobs accrue decades of mystery resin ‘filth’.

To add injury to the insulted floors, I and my 70 pound pooch had long been daily hikers in the swampy nearby forest, tracking home enough mud to plant zinnias in heavily trafficked areas. I yearned for the good old days when dust was the culprit challenging my castle’s virtue.

Confessing my dilemma to my lifelong domestic goddess friend June Time, she euphorically described her hand-held roll-around steamer, recounting how "grime melts" like molten lava. Licking my lips like a sailor at a strip show, I loaded up the borrowed machine.

From the second I held that wand with steam gushing in a lavish hiss, I felt empowered; ready to storm the enemy and reclaim my home. I marveled watching the streaming mold emitted from the bathroom grout and kitchen tile like in those middle-of-the-night infomercials. By the time I hit the dishwasher and oven buttons, I was officially possessed.

Gleaming like new, things seemed unearthly sterile. I browsed eBay and spotted my future; the Turbo Charged version of June’s yesterday’s-news model. The day my Turbo-Steamer arrived; I went to war. Unfortunately I failed to notice that, in my power-of-steam ambush assault, I was wrecking my house and destroying the kitchen.

My first warning should have been when the sprayer on my pricey Kohler kitchen faucet fell in half. Despite the silver toned buttons on the dishwasher beginning to peel, I continued undeterred. Never mind that when detailing around the countertop Jenn-Air grill knobs and dials, there was a burst of grey smoke that replicated a sequence in I Dream of Jeannie.

Then there was the gas cook top. I lifted it to clean the tawdry underbelly. Unfortunately, the electric ignition began to hiccup; non-stop day after day until in a pique of shattered nerve rage, I donned rubber gloves and took kitchen sheers to the wires. This after I learned that, despite being unimaginably clean, 3 of the 4 burner-knob controls were frozen into immobile uselessness.

The electric oven? Immaculate! However, it only now worked on full-blast broil. I have zero idea how I polished off the aging dishwasher and with it the disposer. Fresh as flowers. Dead as door nails.

Thanks to Carla at Kiva’s Kitchens, I finally finished the complete replacement of my kitchen built-ins. And my Turbo Steamer? Like the table saw that severed my fingers in 2002, I sold that sucker on eBay; listed with lavish photos of the appliance taken in an idealized sunlit leafy grotto setting utilizing colorful floral accents. With before-and-after hygienic detail shots of me in green surgical scrubs leaning over it. Describing its uncanny ability to make any house ‘ungodly clean’.

God help the guy who bought it.

See more stories in:

• Self-Improvement
• Questionable Judgement

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