How Clean Is Your House?

[Deleted]

Thanks for the info, ladybug. I'm looking forward to a daily dose of Kim and Aggie!
And... honk?

[girlnamedcarl]

I think it means "smell." I could be wrong.

[nitenurse]

Got it in one, GNC.

[grumpygirl]

I've also heard them say something that sounds like "pong" that I assume means bad odor.

I get so mad at the people who are clearly going to be in exactly the same boat in two months. Why do they even bother going through this? There is something seriously mentally wrong with them.

[Shanmac]

There is something seriously mentally wrong with them.

I agree. I think something is mentally wrong with a lot of the people on the show. Sure, some are just lazy, but ... the squalor/filth some live in -- voluntarily! -- bespeaks something much worse than that, IMHO. I remember seeing an episode with a successful, self-described "heath nut." This woman was educated -- a lawyer -- and seemed totally normal. She was into working out, health food, etc. But the house -- the filth. She would take gum out of her mouth and just stick it to furniture when she was done with it. Jars and bottles of food were open, rotting in the refrigerator. An unwrapped game hen was rotting in the freezer. Kim and Aggie took samples and told her that the toilet -- a horror to behold -- was cleaner than the fridge, which contained bacteria that could kill her. To live like that tells me something was not right with the poor woman.

The show is the stuff of nightmares for me, but I love Kim and Aggie. They're so cheerful about the whole thing. I would be running away screaming. Those two are hilarious.

[Deleted]

Has anyone else got the book? I got it in a bookshop but I dare say you could get it on Amazon. My mom never taught me to clean much apart from a bit of dusting and vaccuming, so I always felt a bit clueless and daunted when I went out into the world on my own and suddenly had all these different surfaces getting grottier by the day. Anyway, I flicked through the book at the store and got this "Angels singing a Chorus from on High" moment when I suddenly realised this book would teach me everything!

There's chapters of each room, and they go through each surface in turn, carpets, curtains, upholstery etc. and tell you how to clean it (and how not to clean it so you won't ruin it). And at the beginning they tell you how often you should do everything i.e. once-a-year tasks right down to the little things that are daily tasks so things don't build up (washing up, binning newspapers).

They tell you all about cleanliness with pets and stuff (the amount of times I've seen a litter tray in a kitchen corner and never thought about it - now I shudder) and how you should wash your sheets and towels at 60 degrees otherwise it doesn't kill the bedbugs. Loads of really great practical stuff. And all with their characteristic voices throughout ("OH, THE GROT!") and they use virtually only products like vinegar and baking soda and stuff like that.

My husband laughs at my needing a book to clean - but I actually feel like I know what I'm doing now. So yeah, for anyone out of their depth with cleaning like me, look it up.

[grumpygirl]

Book? There's a BOOK? Wow, I've gotta find that. I swear that using lemon juice and baking soda on my range top makes it cleaner than anything else I've tried. Plus I've using either lemon juice or vinegar to clean everything in the kitchen. These women are goddesses of cleaning, plus they're so funny.

Oh, and what the heck is bio powder? I've figured out that toilet soap is what we call bar soap or bath soap. And we call bicarbonate of soda "baking soda." I love Aggie's Scottish accent. They're both so funny.

[canuckcutie]

"I've also heard them say something that sounds like "pong" that I assume means bad odor."

Yep. I was born in the UK and honk/pong both refer to a foul odour.

I've seen people before on Oprah that were living in similar situations depicted on this show. They clean up the place, go back a few months later and the house has descended back into filth. Absolutely some folks are lazy but I do think some people have some kind of mental illness that leads to hording items and the inability to take care of their environment.

I consider myself a pretty tidy person and I hate living in mess. I don't think I could physically bring myself to walk into the homes depicted in this show, it'd make me ill.

[Cranky Old Broad]

canuckcutie said:

I consider myself a pretty tidy person and I hate living in mess. I don't think I could physically bring myself to walk into the homes depicted in this show, it'd make me ill.

I know! It's one thing to lag a bit behind on dusting or scrubbing the floors (I hate dusting and when I do the floors, it's on hands and knees so I'm in pain for a few days afterwards), but it's quite another to live in squalor! And I'm sensitive to smells so I'd be upchucking all over the place if I had to go into some of those places. Then when they pick up something like someone's dirty underwear and take a sniff of it... *feels faint*

Every time my husband and I watch that show, my comment is invariably, "How can people stand to live like that?" But it's like a trainwreck. I can't look away.

[ivy]

I would wager a lot of these people have OCD-related hoarding issues, in which case cleaning their houses will do no good, because they will immediately start hoarding again.

I liked the time they helped those people in a rock band and the girl who owned the house was practically shoving them out the door at the end, saying, "My mom's coming and she doesn't know I had help!" That's gratitude for ya! Kim and Aggie tend to be a little obnoxious IMO so I found that funny.