Next Question....

Okay-

So you know I have flooring issues...

Which usually leads to cleaning issues...

Which ultimately leads to germ issues!

I'm not a wash-your-hands-dozens-of-times-a-day kind of gal...

(Close, but not dozen(s)... but I do have hand sanitizer on my key chain and sanitizing wipes in my car).

Or a take-your-shoes-off-at-the-door housewife...

(Secretly, I'd like to be, but I don't want to bug my kids that much... besides, my husband would NEVER do it. Hmmm... maybe if he had to clean the floors, he would consider it...)

I'm not even a keep-the-house-spotless-no-matter-what, clean-up-as-soon-as-you-pull-it-out kind of mom.

I would say I'm an average housekeeper. Our house is lived in. You WILL find dust in my home.(I hate to dust more than any other chore). There will always be some pile in some corner waiting to find it's home. And, of course, more often than not, a toy and shoe or two will be found left out of place.

BUT... the older I get, the more I find I'm turning into a

GERM-A-PHOBE!

I blame it on a commercial I saw several years ago for some carpet cleaning company. The camera followed the homeowners, their children, and their pets that roam inside and out and scanned up close and personal all the things that their shoes, backpacks, purses, feet/paws walked through or sat in throughout a day. THEN, showed those same shoes, backpacks, purses, and feet/paws entering back into the house and onto the floors/carpet. Without getting too graphic, I'll just say EYE OPENING!!! Effective advertising too. And something that really got my noodles spiraling!

I know there is not one person reading this who hasn't seen a mop bucket in a public place being used and the water is BLACK AND MUDDY!!!

Floors are filthy!

Which leads to: our shoes are filthy!

Which leads to: our purses, diaper bags, backpacks, or whatever else we carry around with is... ALL FILTHY!

Think about a public bathroom... even the clean ones like at your church. Do you think everyone practices the high standards of hygiene that you do? I can tell you that even if the other women who share that bathroom with you do... their kids do not! (Only because they are in training, I know... but you get the point!) And besides, they probably just came from the mall or a school cafeteria where the floors were recently mopped by one using a big bucket of mud water. ICK!

So, what do you do with your purse, diaper bag, hand bags, and backpacks when you go to the bathroom? I try to hang mine on the hook but sometimes there isn't one. And what about when you go out to wash your hands? Do you set it on the counter? Who else had their stuff on the counter and where was it before it landed on the counter?

Okay, you live in a perfect world and you have already thought about this and you take the necessary precautions to avoid nastiness on your bags. Where do you put your bag when you get in your car? Have your feet or anyone else's feet ever been there???? Uh-huh... that's what I thought.

So, let's noodle back around to the how this relates to the floors in our home.

We sweep.

We mop.

We rinse our mop and might even wash the mop head now and again.

Here's the "next question" you've been waiting for.....

Do you ever wash your broom???

Yea, me neither. Until today.

Think about it... we use our broom to prepare for the big cleaning of mopping and de-icking our homes. But the broom is gliding across all those germs and icky things that are waiting to be sanitized and cleaned!!! Who ever thought we need to clean our brooms so as not to just keep spreading all the nastiness from room to room?!?!?!

I know you are just dying to know how my swiss cheese, pregnant brain dove into this bowl of spaghetti....

I was sweeping one of my bathrooms and apparently, during one of those late night visits to the toilet, someone missed... big time! And then I saw it... a long, wet, snail trail where I continued to sweep before realizing what my broom had come in contact with.

Which led to an investigation... which included sniffing and gagging...

Which led to "Okay, now what do I do with this wet, nasty, bacteria infested broom???"

Which led to "What kind of nastiness have I been sweeping all these years and just didn't see???"

Which led to my broom being sprayed and washed in an antibacterial solution... as we speak!

ICK!!!

So, the question... How often do you wash your broom???

Didn't you enjoy this ride through my random, roller coaster,thought process???

You're welcome.

Next topic... pizza buffets...