Cleaning Out Your Outside Garbage Cans

Now why would you go and do a thing like that? I tell ya, cleaning this and cleaning that is a bit nerve racking at best, and absolute insanctum insanum at worst. I was probably a Latin queen of Sheba in a prior life. What an abhorring job, cleaning out the ole dross receptacle. Oh what logic that is, first one must load said receptacle with said waste, secondly one must remove said waste from said receptacle, thirdly one must cleanse all microbiological impurities from said receptacle and fourthly one must refill said receptacle with said waste. Now I don’t know about you but I think Euclid is glad that the logic problems in his day were easy. Ergo we must surmise that this gross job is probably not considered by most homo-sapiens (especially the macho category) let alone properly denoted on their weekly cleaning checklists and schedules. This being said I am going to venture a postulation that when interrogating ones garbage cans one must sprinkle with antibacterial chemicals at least and inflict fire hose like pressure if needed. Do this twice a year. It will keep the flies, maggots and dogs down, I promise. Here is a story and some suggestions that I recommend you can do without calling in the Armed Forces.

Now I think I better interject this little tid bit of info as an FYI. I usually do not take the trash out. You know that the less fair sex needs something to do and I am raising two strapping young lads. I don’t think their hands were meant to gain all their calluses from an Xbox paddle not to mention there is brain rot and rebellion that must be considered. What do you think? Am I totally off my rocker? Besides I don’t think I have to tell you that I do everything else. So its “BOYS GET THAT MONKEY WASTE GARBAGE OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW!”. I am such a lovely mother aren’t I? hehehe.

So the other day I found myself home alone enjoying a little me time, aka peace and quiet. As I was fingering my lovely piping hot java mug I notice a little WWE going on in my nostrils. In the blue corner there was my lovely wisps of Vanilla Nut Pumpkin Pie Java and in the red corner there was this ugly secretion of a maggots arm pit. There was a tendril like jet trail acting as a ten lane freeway connecting to the red corner to the pantry. I knew right off the bat it was that beaver dam garbage. My sweetest of sweets left the lovely over flowing waste receptacle untouched before frolicking off to school. Of course my super mom panties were on in an instant and I was ready to do battle.

I set a course for the pantry to eliminate the tartness that was stealing oxygen from my kitchen. Swooping in with ninja like skills I grasped the hefty kitchen bag full of waste by the neck and did a little hum rendition of the funeral march. I dialed in coordinates and shot off to the land of the giant blue waste contaminate holders next to the shed. Thanks to the stealth upgrades in my super mom panties I was not intercepted by the insect air-force comprised of F-42 Hornets and P28 Flytnings. I approached the blue barrels tentatively, and at DEF-CON 3 the hair inside my nose stood up like little fairies dancing around Peter Pan. I notice a fly that was circling the barrels like a vulture that had found a decaying heap of gourmet sludge. I opened the lid and nausea swept over me taking me back to my first conception. To no one in particular the well oiled hinges of my mouth went to work as I bellered “What in the hill is that gosh darn awful smell?”, using a more correct command of my four letter vocabulary of course. Crawling around in the heaps of rot and fermentation were Satan’s spawn, maggots. A quick near debilitating look revealed that the white trash bags deposited had been haphazardly tossed into the blue cans and left untied, allowing the first wave of zombie creatures to mutate and plan a world domination. They had a good week of unhindered planning while building up their army. I attacked with a few well placed expletives. I knew I had to tackle this mess and went to work. I decided this would require my purple rubbermaids, scrubbing brush, garden hose and chemical warfare. Properly suited I plunged into the depths of hell and began gathering up the loose trash into giant black hefty garbage bags. I wheeled the blue trash barrels over to the nearest hydrant, dumped a half gallon of ammonia in each one and filled them with water. I let them soak giving the ammonia room to work as I returned to the deck to sip on some strong ice tea. A couple drinks later I returned and dumped the sick smelly water into the gravel, laid the barrels on their sides, put the nozzle from the higher regions on the end of the hose and sprayed as a man hath no fury. I then retrieved my Tea Tree Oil and dropped several drops into each trash can, and let it sit awhile as I fled to the deck for another round of ice tea.

Later that afternoon, feeling pretty happy, I dumped out the rest of the water and let the barrels sit in the sun to dry out. They were as good as new. When the family returned home I did have a few things to say. I am pretty sure I got the message across because I haven’t seen anything creepy crawly finding its way out of the trash cans to take over the planet.

You can use any cleaner to complete this awful task, such as 409 or Pine-Sol. I just happen to have ammonia handy so that’s what I used. Anything like I mentioned should work as long as it has a good strong smell, and I highly recommend the Tea Tree Oil as a final disinfectant. Remember to return to the deck for a final sipping of the brown fluid in your glass as a celebration for tackling such a gross job, believing and relieved it won’t come around again for a long time, (hopefully).

Washing Windows

Usually a hot topic when spring comes around. This makes sense with the crazy weather patterns we have been having! Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall, Right?  Which season is it? Or is it Summer, Spring, Fall, Winter? Well, whatever season it is it must be Global Warming and we still have to figure out how to get the windows clean. So many viruses out, your "Windows" (you know the Microsoft kind) will crash at the drop of a mouse. Getting the grime off your windows can be almost as time consuming as removing the lint from your innie belly button, albeit not as interesting though! I admit that I would rather go after the lint then attack the grimelins from the window. It’s a pane in the posterior cheeks if you ask me, certainly not on the top of my cleaning checklist. However, if you don’t clean your windows along with your other spring cleaning it is almost as bad as if you forgot to vacuum. BTW that is a little trick I learned when I was a Minnie Me, you could make mom believe that you did all your cleaning if you just vacuumed. Note to self: check under the kids beds when I get home. The moral of the story is that your windows probably should not have that grimy multicolored look unless your dwelling is the Canterbury Cathedral. If you have a particularly grimy window covered in hard water spots, scale, and bug droppings then I have a story that might help. 

A few weeks back a friend of mine called to tell me about the black widow infested vine forest thriving in the window wells to the basement of a house he had just moved into. It was truly amazing. Beautiful he said, with orange trumpet vines that had laid claim to the job of filtering out all light that would seek any type of refuge in the dark basement. Let me tell you HEPA don’t got noth’in on motivated trumpet vines in the filter business. As you can imagine in every forest there must be creatures. The king of each vine jungle had the biggest juiciest Black Widows you ever did see. These must have been Shelob's babies. There was no shortage of yummy little pill bugs, other spiders, crickets, and beetles in each window well to fulfill each fatherless widow’s dominatrix like hunger and desire. There might have even been a hobbit or two fighting to bring down the S&M ring of spider dominance. So you can imagine the state of each window well and pane recessed in the menacing forests. These windows had seen it all and more by look of the mummified crust that had adhered itself to the once pure and graceful glass. 

My friend branded his trusty two handed Fiskars 9154 PowerGear 32-Inch Bypass Lopper and went to task of de-forestation. I told him he was encouraging Global Warming in removing all that foliage but he gave no heed. He was a man on a mission out to conquer the Holy Land. Leveled with Fern Gully like reminiscence dancing in the air he changed gears and tools bending his mind to the task of capture and interrogation. He really wanted to catch the mini Shelobs and keep them as pets, his precious. Thankfully he has a wife with enough sense to abhor the very idea of any eight legged enigma. Her response to his ludicrousity was Gandalf like, “YOU SHALL NOT KEEP.” So he did what any man would do and went looking for a magnifying glass and found instead a shiny new bottle of Ortho Home Defense MAX Insect Killer. It was effective. He succeeded in banishing the life out of the spider queens. I think I even heard their great great grand children cry out in the final moments. Now that the fun was done things took on a serious note as there were windows to be rescued. The Windex came out and the mummified crust was attacked with vim and vigor. All that it seemed to do was make the grime, water spots, and scaly build up look young and fresh. So it was decided that the scale and water spots should be attacked directly and the Lime Away was brought out and applied with a terry cloth. It sat for a while and the windows were rinsed with clean water. That should have had some effect but no it did not. This was getting serious. It was looking as if the windows had lost their will to fight and had allowed all the grime and scale to take over their very soul. Drastic measures were required. Now be warned that what I am about to tell you to use is not considered environmentally sound. Much prudence and caution must be exercised when pulling out the atomics. I told my friend that we better use the keys and dial the code that would “rewease the secwet weapon”. I gave him a bottle of The Works toilet bowl cleaner. This stuff is poison controls worst nightmare. The fumes, if accidentally inhaled, may cause schizophrenia. You must use rubber gloves and a possible face mask when using The Works. Think of it as the Frankenstein of chemicals. You must also apply it with much diligence and care. My friend used paper towels. He applied some of the liquid to the towel and wiped it across the surface so as not to create a chemical spill that would require a call to FEMA. The effect was immediate as if some dark necromancer magic was bringing the windows back from the dead. The mummified crust was literally disintegrated with an acidic hiss. Clean water was used to wipe the windows to remove the chemicals. I suggested wiping them down a few more times with clean water. The windows were allowed to dry and he said they looked almost new. A finishing Windexing and you could not tell that they had ever been anything but beautiful clear windows.

 My friend called me the next day and said he thinks the fumes from The Works helped the bugs find the happy hunting grounds as there were bug remains found at the bottom of each window well. So if you have windows that need a resurrection and you have tried everything else then give this method a try. Just remember to respect your chemicals.