Posts Tagged "cleaning windows"

Miss Martha Stewart, America’s legendary home-making guru, instructs:

Dirty panes are no problem when you use rubber-edged squeegees, which are quicker and more effective than cloth or newspaper. They come in a variety of sizes — and a screw-on extension will let you reach high spots.

To start, dip a sponge into a bucket of warm water and a few drops of mild dish soap. Wet window; rub dirt away. Dampen squeegee; starting at an upper corner, draw it down pane from top to bottom. Repeat, overlapping strokes and wiping rubber edge with sponge after each stroke. (For large windows, ”snake” squeegee back and forth; then touch up edges.) Dry windowsills with a cloth.

(Source: www.marthastewart.com)

What happens when I clean my windows:

Feeling inspired, I decided to clean the insides of my windows a while ago. I don’t have a rubber-edged squeegee but I equipped myself with a proper glass cleaner and an e-cloth so I could feel pleasantly like Ms. Stewart.

While I was rubbing a few dirty spots away, I happened to notice a small cobweb just at the top of the window, under the curtain pelmet.

While I was de-cobwebbing the curtain, I realised that actually there were dreadful cobwebs all over the house so I had to spend ages wobbling about on top of a ladder while wafting around the vacuum cleaner with all its extension tubes attached.

I ended up wearing several cobwebs which is not a great look. The washing machine had to go into overdrive and there was no hot water left for my emergency bath.

Once the walls were de-cobwebbed successfully, I suddenly noticed that they could do with a paint.

While I was painting the kitchen, I saw that the skirting boards were horribly scuffed and needed a good sanding down.

After I’d finished with the sander, I discovered I’d been a bit over-enthusiastic and had to apply 2 tubes of wood filler to fill in the dents I’d made.

Having filled up all the holes and sanded everything down again, I then had to remove all the cupboard doors from their hinges and take off the handles

so that I could paint all the woodwork.

When I took the cupboard doors off to be painted,

I had to tidy up everything in the cupboard before it all fell out onto the floor.

After I had re-hung the doors on their hinges, I found some un-nerving left-overs which I don’t know what to do with.

I also found some paint splodges on the floor and had to steam clean it. As I had the steam cleaner out, I decided to whizz it over the curtains and discovered the lining in one pair had torn and needed replacing. Mending the curtains took up all a weekend I had been carefully saving for better things. When I re-hung the curtains, I noticed that the windows needed cleaning.

 I believe Messrs Flanders and Swann once suffered a similar circular problem and were inspired to write a song called, ‘The Gas Man cometh’;  they lived off the royalties for years. 

And the moral of this cautionary tale is…

Before you decide to embark on anything rash, do please decide whether you resemble Martha Stewart or me most closely so that you can plan the forseeable future accordingly.

Yours vigorously querying the assertion that, ‘Dirty panes are no problem’,