Mopping

Somebody, please, tell me how to mop. I have HAD IT with this filthy floor.

I can’t believe that I am thirty-five and I still don’t feel I know how to mop. Yes, I mopped for my parents once in a while when I was young. Yes, I worked at the 49th Street Galleria and mopped that sticky floor in Orange Julius every night at closing. Yes, I have mopped, well, at least once a month, every since I was married. (I know some women would die of shock that I can’t claim to have done it much more often than that.) But I still haven’t figured it out. How do people DO it?

I finally marched into the Don Aslett store and asked the employees. First of all, they didn’t even agree with each other, and argued for a while over which cleaner I needed. Then they got off on this squeegee thing. Right. Like I’m really going to do that. I have to admit, though, that the idea is the only one that makes sense so far because it is the only one that involves actually picking the dirty water up off of the floor and putting it somewhere else entirely. Every other method makes me feel like I am just slopping the dirt around.

My friend felt sorry for me and actually gave me her Swifter. Nice thought but who has the money to buy all the little pads? And besides, the thing glides right over my grout and doesn’t even touch the dirt down in there.

Then there’s the people who say you have to mop once to clean and a second time to rinse. (Of course, the people who have told me that are all empty-nesters with too much time on their hands.) Right. Listen, honey, we’re lucky to get that once done around here.

One time I was so stressed about the dirty floor but it was already dinner time on Saturday and I knew it was the thing to send me over the edge into insanity, emotionally, if I were to get out the bucket right then. I gathered all of the guys up and said, “Listen, this floor is horribly dirty and I should be mopping it right now, but I JUST CAN’T DO IT TODAY!!!!! Does anybody care if it goes another week?” Of course, no one did. (In another few years I’ll just assign it to one of them.)

So if no one cares but me whether it is clean or dirty, why don’t I just give up and let it be dirty?

Well, I really hate it when my shoe comes off while I’m walking across the floor because it is stuck in the orange juice—know what I mean?

There’s got to be another way to do this.
If I ever build a house I’m going to put a drain in the middle of the kitchen—maybe under the table, and install a hose. And troughs around the edges. Yeah, that would work.