Day 308: cleaning the bathroom

today’s regularly scheduled weekly plan post is interrupted for a special edition of:

~ cleaning the bathroom ~

content warning: gross as hell; if you’re planning to eat in the next 72 hours, avoid reading

don’t you love it when you decide to do your family a solid during one of your visits home so you walk to target and buy a bunch of household cleaning supplies but when you start cleaning you find out that there’s actually a bunch of cleaning supplies under the sink but wait who bought this stuff because clearly no one’s cleaned these bathrooms in years but oh well, at least you have some extra cleaning supplies. you clear out the counters and find that grandpa’s been keeping a personal collection of the plastic covers for disposable razors like way too many of them inside the cup that holds his toothbrushes wait these toothbrushes are like five years old and the bristles are all wrecked does he ever replace his toothbrushes? and then you notice that the inside and outside of the cup is covered in crusty white stuff and the faucet too and wow i totally thought that those splatters on the wall were part of the wallpaper but no it’s really his toothpaste mixed with spit that’s hardened everywhere over years okay this is hella gross but you love your grandpa and he clearly stopped giving a fuck a long time ago so you’ll give some fucks for him and clean up this ungodly mess.

so you clear everything off the bathroom counter and as you inspect the aftershave and the hair gel that you’re pretty sure you last used in junior high you realize that everything expired a long ass time ago so you toss them all in a trash bag and hopefully grandpa doesn’t go through this and try to salvage them because he’s definitely done that before with your trash in the name of saving money. one of items on the counter is a cleaning spray can called scrubbing bubbles and you’re not sure if you can still use it because you’re pretty sure it’s been there for many years just like everything else but you don’t find an expiration date so what the hell let’s spray everything down with it. you spray generously because there are a bunch of stains and crusted gunk that’s been setting for eons and you hope that this stuff will magically loosen them up. you also grab some comex bleach powder can you found downstairs and heap it on because double the cleaning product probably translates to double the cleaning power and you need all the help you can get. damn, you’re such a problem solver. go you.

while you wait for the stuff to do its magic you casually read the comex label and there’s this bit about not mixing the powder with other household products like toilet bowl cleaners and products that contain ammonia. well this scrubbing bubbles can isn’t a toilet bowl cleaner but what the hell a bunch of the ingredients have “ammonium chloride” in their name. you’re not sure what the difference is between ammonium and ammonia but you’re pretty sure they’re close enough for you to be worried and you stifle your regrets about not paying attention in chemistry and getting a C in that class but there’s no time for that right now because you have to find out what the heck you just did. you walk over to your ipad and say “hey siri” which feels weird because you never talk to your devices but your hands have cleaning supplies stuff on them so you have no choice but to ask what happens when you mix ammonia and comex.

“chlorine gas, chloramine and other toxic chemicals are released in the air”

“mixture has been used in chemical warfare”

“painful chemical burns […] causing intense pain, cellular damage, and death”

fuck.

this little act of kindness is going to kill you and your family and boy your dumb ass knows how to sling together thousands of lines of code to build fancy chrome extension but you can’t even manage to clean your bathroom without accidentally creating poison gas. you hold your breath and open the windows and decide to go clean the downstairs bathroom in the meantime and pray that you don’t experience sudden burning sensations in your lungs.

you look at the toilet and reconsider whether this is all worth it because there’s crusty gunk everywhere. the toilet rim, the underside of the toilet seat, the toilet bowl itself — they all have ancient pools and trails of hardened yellow-brownish stuff. you figure you’re in too deep at this point so you grab an old sponge lying around and decide to sacrifice it for this deed. you wet the sponge, put on some comex without the scrubbing bubbles this time, and start scrubbing. you start with the rim which you instantly realize was a mistake because it’s the nastiest part and now you can’t use this sponge for the other parts even though they’re also covered with nasty bits but sorry bro this sponge is now done. the part of the rim closest to the front of the toilet is especially stubborn and won’t come off and you wonder just how long it’s been since anyone’s cleaned this stuff okay wait so grandpa clearly doesn’t clean and your parents haven’t done it for him so the last person who could’ve done it was your grandma but she passed away in 2012 so you realize that you’re clearing at least 8 years worth of hardened human waste and suddenly you wish you didn’t do that calculation and shit you realize you’re not wearing gloves and you think about stopping and getting them but you’re really in too deep so you keep on trucking while a part of you dies inside.

you hear dad come downstairs to eat dinner and he takes a look and says wow and offers to help but you’re not sure if he means it or is saying it just to say it because you’ve been cleaning and making a ruckus for the past hour without hearing a peep from him but maybe that’s not fair because he could’ve been in the middle of something and not have heard. but then again ever since they moved in several years ago they’ve kept their bathroom fairly clean but have let the bathrooms that grandpa uses devolve into a cesspool of unspeakable filth and if they haven’t bothered to do anything by now do they really care? you feel disappointed in them for letting grandpa live like this but then again is it really reasonable to expect them to clean after him who knows. you tell him to go have dinner first since this work will kill his appetite.

you finish with the downstairs bathroom and go upstairs hoping that the air cleared out in the meantime. you wipe down the mirrors and the counters and without all the expired products everywhere it already looks so much nicer but ugh this toilet is even nastier than the downstairs one and you try really hard not to think about whether the gunk you’re cleaning up is somehow soaking through the disinfecting wipes you’re using and getting on your hands and damn it you should’ve gotten gloves but now it really is too late. you scrub and scrub and think about whether you should work on the ring of gunk sitting at water level inside the bowl that could only have resulted from repeated instances of grandpa not flushing and letting stuff sit there for long periods of time, almost certainly to “save money on the water bill”. that ring of death seems immortal because it hasn’t changed a bit despite multiple rounds of toilet bowl cleaners and scrubbing with a foam brush and maybe that means you need to drain the water from the toilet to really go ham on it but this cleaning adventure has been rough enough already and you decide that it’s a battle for another day. you’re still struggling to scrape off some of the stuff on the inner rim and think about using the scrub with stiff bristles that you bought from target but that seems like it’ll increase the odds of particles going airborne and making contact with you and you’d rather get covid so you decide that chlorox wipes it is because you’ve used up your sponges and any cloth towels used for this endeavor would have to be thrown away immediately so that’s a no-go.

just as you finish, dad comes up and again offers to help and you tell him that you’re done for today but that he could help tomorrow and maybe you were too quick to judge him and he really wants to help but then he says you should wear gloves and that somehow seems immensely unfair and you think ok that’s it i’m done chlorine gas come take me