The Steamer

True confession: I have fallen in love with a home cleaning device. You won't hear me say that often - I personally detest cleaning the house. Unfortunately I like living in a clean house, so I have had only two options . . . get over my aversion to housework, or hire someone else to do it.

When I was working fulltime, I hired someone else to do it. The appointed person usually did a good job for the first few months, then started to slack off as time went on. About the time I noticed waxed-over dirt on the dining room floor, and cobwebs in most of the high corners of the house, I'd let that person go and try it myself for a month or two before hiring someone else. Et cetera, et cetera.

When I retired from my fulltime job, I couldn't justify hiring a cleaning service anymore. I mean, I was theoretically home much of the time, so why did I need someone to come in and clean my house? Drat. The house hasn't been so clean lately, although in reality it's probably as clean as it was when I was having someone else do it. The problem is it's not clean the way I want it to be, and I have no one to blame.

We were visiting our friends in Denver and getting their home ready for 31 people for sit-down Hanukkah dinner, when Yasmin, one of the daughters, pulled out this machine and started running it over the hardwood floors. Everywhere she went, she sprayed a cleaner on the floor, not even bothering to bend down, and then ran the machine over it. Steam came up, and the floor behind the machine was clean, shiny, and beautiful. It didn't even look wet. "What the heck is that?" I asked.

It was a steam cleaner, and I bought one immediately after I got home. Here's the link on Amazon. You sweep or vacuum the floor first, and then you spray with a good cleaning product, like Method, and run the steamer over the floor to wash and deep-clean it. The linoleum in my kitchen, which is seriously trashed and really needs to be replaced, hasn't been so clean since it was new 20 years ago. I mean the corners and edges too. The hardwood in the dining room, the victim of the wax-over-dirt disaster, is starting to look great. A few more passes with the steamer and I should have most of the old wax, as well as the dirt under it, up and out. Couldn't be easier.

Forget mops. Forget getting down on your knees and scubbing. I'm sold on my new love!

The New 1970s stereo system

Wow, Wayne's really on my good side now. He has found an incredible turntable from the 1970s era (the BEST electronics for playing vinyl) for $25, replaced its stylus (a.k.a. needle...I'm learning new terminology here), researched and found a top-of-the-line pre-amp (who knew you needed a pre-amp as well as an amplifier??) from the same era online for $45, dusted them off, and hooked them all up.

 Now we're finally listening to some of our many hundreds of old record albums. It's fun and the system sounds great!

It wasn't really as easy as it sounds. First we had to clear out the little library, where we keep all our records and CDs and books on shelves, and where the stereo equipment is housed. That's the part I helped with. We had used that little room as an office for awhile, so it was filled with a desk, a filing cabinet, a computer, and lots of paper. We couldn't even get to the music! Once all that stuff got moved out, voila! It was a music room and library again.

Of course then we had to organize the wires and decide which of the three sets of speakers and amplifiers to keep and where to put them. That was a bit of work, but it was well worth it.

Here's the first record we played (one of my favorites). Yay, Jimmy Cliff and reggae!!




And here are some of the rest of the records. We're still working our way through ...

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