Filth discovery

So it started this evening, when I tried to get up from the kitchen chair and my left leg pant leg stuck to it, making a peeling sticker sound when I tried to stand up. "Nice." My best sarcastic response to the mysterious mess someone politely spilled on the chair that morning at breakfast and didn't bother to clean up or at the very least tell me about.

So I grabbed a wet dishrag and proceeded to scrub the sticky substance off the wooden chair seat. As I was bent down scrubbing someone's leftover breakfast drippings, I noticed the legs of that same chair were all spattered with some brown stain. Instantly my brain pictured the numerous cups of soda dropped on the floor and how I asked the girls to clean it up but their idea of cleaning and my idea of cleaning are totally different. Hence, coke on the chair legs.

As my eyes scanned the lengths of the chair legs thinking that would be next cleaning task on the list, I caught a glimpse of a few other chair legs. On one, was stuck a few pieces of red gummy stuff. I'm pretty sure it was candy, but it's possible that it might be pieces of salsa. Not 100 percent sure. Then on another chair leg, was dried up strips of purple juice, which I'm pretty sure would still taste like cran-grape. A juice flavor my girls prefer to spill more often than any clear colored juice, or water for that matter. We NEVER spill water, only dark colored, sticky drinks. Way more convenient!

Anyways, scanning the chair legs, brought my eyes to the floor, where there was an array of cereal balls, chip crumbs, and random strands of hair from a house full of girls.

Yummy, huh?!

All I could think about was putting "cleaning the chairs and table" on my priority list. If it wasn't already 8:30 p.m., with bedtime peeking around the corner, I woulda grabbed a bucket full of cleaning supplies and went to town on that table! It's amazing how fast a kitchen table in a house full of young kids can become, basically, a science experiment.

So I stood back up, examining the table a little more closely, and took inventory of the all the dried food and drinks lining the molded edges of the, what use to be, beautiful wooden table. As I scraped tiny bits of crusty substances out of the edging with my fingernail, I wondered how ALL this junk got left on there. We wipe the table off with a hot dishrag at least five times a day, after meals and after snacks, and sometimes in between. Apparently we are missing some areas!

And then there's that crevasse that runs the width of the table where two ends meet, otherwise known as the "catch-all canyon." I don't even want to think about all the varieties of crumbs and spilled drinks that have pooled in there. Plus, it'll be like a surprise when we do finally pull the table apart to expand it and finally get to reveal all the delicious mummified matter in there. Kinda like the rare day you have to slide your stove out of its spot and get to see the sides of the counter beside it. Gag! Or when you have to roll your fridge out from the wall and you get to see the lovely assortment of slime and dust and whatnots behind it. Yum!

Anyways, taking inventory of the grossness of my kitchen table and chairs has reminded me that my work at home is never complete. Just because the laundry is done or the carpet is vacuumed, doesn't really mean squat. It just took a good stick to my chair this evening, to finally take a good, hard look at the filth surrounding me at our poor table and chairs. And that filth had my name all over it. I was looking forward to not having plans this coming weekend, but I know one thing that just made the list!