cleaning products that are foreign, combined with crew that is foreign to cleaning

I do request help from the other household members to assist in cleaning the house from time to time.  I swear I do.  Are you familiar with the saying, 'If I don't do it myself, . . . ?'

Coach knew that I wanted to return from Scotland and be surrounded by tidy, clean rooms.  This is asking a lot, because our home rarely reaches clean and tidy status when I haven't been out of the country- so perhaps my hopes were a tad unrealistic.

While I was away, Coach took the three youngest boys to Florida for 4 days to visit his folks.  (Four days with his parents vs missing a connection in Heathrow . . . the visitors to Florida definitely drew short straws there.  I'd much rather feel exhausted and in desperate need of a shower in an airport for an additional 7 hours - bringing our travel time to close to 24 hours than spend 4 days with in-laws.  Just saying).  As much as I tried to get the house in perfect order before I left, the boys were still going to live here for a few days while we were gone.  Enough said.   

Just like the good ole days when I was about to head to the hospital to have a baby, I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor moments before I left for the airport.

I came home from Scotland last week.  (I promise to go into more detail about that adventure later.)  Coach got home from Florida the night before we returned from Scotland.  He proudly shared with me that he had Eddie clean a few toilets before we arrived home.  Awesome news.  My goals had shifted a bit though.  All I really cared about was going to sleep in my own bed.

The night we landed I walked thru the kitchen until suddenly I was ice skating.  No joke.  I almost went down.  'OK, who spilled something here?'  Coach had a puzzled look on his face.  'How did you know?  I spilled some grease from the rotisserie chicken I bought at the grocery store for dinner.'  A few more days peppered with more impromptu ice skating episodes in that particular spot, and I finally asked HOW he cleaned up the grease.  'A wet paper towel.'  Duh.

Days after our much less eventful return to the USA, I instructed Mini to clean the kids’ bathroom.  It was technically Tank's turn, but he met up with his best friend's family and stayed in Florida when Coach flew home.  Living the dream.

My previous post about the issues I have with the kids' bathroom was written in order to make this post more streamlined and sensible.

Mini claimed to be done with her chore, and I cautiously entered my least favorite room in the house.  First of all, I'm no detective but small wads of toilet paper tucked behind the hand soap on the counter is a good indicator that Mini didn't REALLY do a good job of cleaning the bathroom.  Partial smears of toothpaste offered more evidence of a job not well done.  I was already fuming when I glanced at the mirror . . .

Folks, it was totally fogged.  I'm sorry I didn't snap a photo of it.  It would've been easy to take a photo and not worry about my reflection appearing in the photo, BECAUSE NO ONE COULD SEE ANYTHING IN THIS MIRROR.

Mini explained that there was a problem with the Windex.  Huh?  Since when is Windex at fault for this?  She showed me the bottle she used.  The whole bathroom smelled weird.  Clean, but weird.  The story unraveled and the truth behind Eddie's toilet cleaning and Coach's 'help' in assigning a kid a cleaning task came to light. 

This photo is frustrating me because
I don't think it is clear just how
 neon the 'fake' Windex is on the left. 

The 'Windex' bottle used was tampered with.  Eddie and Coach failed to find one of the 5 or 6 bottles of Windex stored in the pantry.  So they put their pea brains together, and voila.  They poured Mr. Clean - a tile floor cleaner - into an empty bottle of Windex.  Coach claims that they barely added any and that they diluted it with water.  Really?  Please see the attached photo, because this neon shit doesn't look diluted at all.

After the non-diluted concoction was created, Ed used it to spray toilets and clean them.  I'm not really that fussy about what is used to clean toilets - I mean Mr. Clean kills germs and stuff, but they failed to label the new cleaner they whipped up.  AND, Windex might be fine for toilet seats and rims, but I use comet to scrub toilets.  Again, I refuse to complain because a clean toilet is a clean toilet - but I just want to point out that 'Comet' is readily available.  Not sure why anyone felt the need to introduce Mr. Clean in a spray bottle to my abundant supply of cleaners

Here you can see the 3 cans of Comet.  6 good bottles of Windex.  Then front and center is the Mr. Clean floor cleaner alongside the neon Windex bottle that is apparently filled with Mr. Clean.  And hey, why not just pour some Mr. Clean on a rag and clean the toilet that way?  Why did we need to confuse everyone with a mysteriously neon Windex experiment?  

I guess I can also point out here that I have never been one to mop up spilled grease on a kitchen floor with a wet paper towel.  Thus the appearance of the jug of white vinegar in the above photo.  I guess this counts for exhibits A, B, C, and so on to support my case.  Even when they try to help . . . they are CLUELESS!!!!!