A visitor from America, a sticky toddler and an incontinent cat

This week has been pretty busy.

Not only have we had a very poorly cat who has drooled, wee’d and stunk herself all around the house before ending up going for a very expensive ‘cat holiday’ at the Royal Veterinary College; but we’ve also had a sticky two year old hurricane following in her wake, having discovered the joy of stickers, glue and porridge.

And, with a last minute visit arranged by the Other Half’s sister, who is coming to see us from America (a HUGE excitement as we haven’t seen her for quite some time) that’s left us with a bit of a cleaning frenzy going on.

I don’t expect the house to be a shining vision of clean lines and minimalism, not a stray toy in sight. That really never is going to happen.

But ridding the house of sticky patches and cat inflicted stains is somewhat of a priority, both due to having a house guest and just for my own sanity.

So, time to get cleaning.

One of the most amazing gadgets I have ever discovered since having to clean up after the cat is a rubber bristled broom. The Other Half has a nice Turkish rug which seems to act as a cat hair magnet, and I’d vacuum it constantly without great success. Then I had a Kleeneze catalogue come through the door and it promised great things from a rubber broom, so I thought we’d give it a try even though it did sound a bit weird. And it really works! So that’s the rug sorted 🙂

Then to tackle the cat wee and stink problem. This one is entirely more annoying than the cat hair, and requires a really good scrub down to get rid of all traces otherwise the cat seems to identify particular spots (currently the bottom step on the stairs – ewww) as her own personal toilet. One thing that I’ve found works really well is to follow up a good scrub with disinfectant with squeezing a lemon over the area. Turns out cats aren’t too keen on citrus, and it seems pretty effective at nipping the ‘toilet on the stairs’ problem in the bud.

And that leaves the sticky toddler to deal with. I always used to visit houses of friends with children and wonder why they had little stickers stuck to everything and hadn’t bothered removing them – now I know why. It’s incredibly difficult, and entirely frustrating to have to sit there scrubbing and scraping for hours with very little effect.

I have found that in some cases, covering the sticker with boiling hot water and then scrubbing at it a minute or two later really works. But for really stubborn, really sticky little collages that little trick isn’t so helpful. So it’s time to whip out the sticky stuff remover!

When I found out this stuff existed, I practically fell on my knees and offered up thanks to the deity of housework randomness. (As a teenager I always scoffed at my strange adults and their fondness for random kitcheny things and cleaning substances but now I too have turned into one of those adults!)

And, speaking as one of those adults, it just makes sticky scrubbing so much easier 🙂

So, the house is now destunk, defluffed, and destickied. Well, until Bubby D gets her hands on a bowl of porridge tomorrow morning and the cat follows her around trying to nick some, anyway (I didn’t know cats even LIKED porridge but this one really does!).

Now we can just relax and look forward to our visitor. Hooray!