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That's absolutely insane.
Nature red in tooth and claw ain't seen nothing yet
one of those things you have to record so people don't think you're lying when you tell them about it
Emergency cleaning: Unfuck your whole house in the shortest time possible
So, your landlord/parents/home inspector/favorite movie star is dropping by, and your place is a disaster. You don’t have much time to clean it up. You’re in emergency mode. Let’s get started.
- Don’t panic. Panic leads to fear, fear leads to procrastination, procrastination leads to the dark side. You can do this, but you have to stay calm.
- Unlike maintenance cleaning, we’re not looking to completely unfuck one space at a time. Instead, we want to decrease the overall mess in stages, spread evenly across the whole area that we’re concerned about. If you think your home is at Level 10 filth, we want to bring the whole thing down to a Level 9, and then down from there. One really clean spot in an otherwise messy home is not going to be helpful here.
- Get prepared. You’ll want to shut the computer down (or turn the modem off if you need your computer to play music). Trust me. Get your music going. Gather up trash bags, your vacuum and mop, some rags or paper towel, sponges, and other cleaning supplies. Use what you have on hand. Don’t get distracted running to the store and spending an hour browsing cleaning supplies. A multi-purpose cleaning concentrate or a jug of vinegar will be just fine.
- Breaks are very important. Depending on your time constraints, work in 20/10s (20 minutes working, 10-minute break) or 45/15s. But take breaks because otherwise you’re marathoning, and marathon cleaning is no one’s friend. Keep hydrated, don’t forget to eat, and check in with yourself frequently to make sure you’re physically doing OK.
- Make your bed. This will be your home base if you get overwhelmed or need somewhere clear to take a break.
- Start with the garbage. Going from room to room, throw out anything that is obvious trash. Once you fill a bag, take it out. Repeat as many times as necessary.
- Move on to dishes. Gather the dishes from all over your house and bring them to the kitchen. If you can, start them soaking in a sink of hot, soapy water or start loading the dishwasher. After the dishes are all in one place, spend one 20/10 getting started getting them under control.
- Now it’s time for your flat surfaces. Countertops, tables, dresser tops, etc. Clear them off and wipe them down. Don’t get distracted in too much sorting and organizing. We’re in crisis mode here. There will be time to get in-depth once this is all done. The same applies to cabinets and closets. Unless you have reason to believe people will be opening closed doors, leave these alone for now.
- Attack the floordrobe and shoe pile. Get your clothes either put away or in the hamper. Start a load of laundry if you need to, but keep in mind that laundry and dishes have three steps: wash, dry, and put it away, goddammit!
- Get random stuff up off the floors. If something is trash-worthy, throw it away now rather than just move it around a bunch of times. Otherwise, put stuff where it belongs.
- Take another 20/10 or 45/15 to catch up on more dishes, if needed.
- Head into the bathroom. Pour some cleaner in the toilet bowl, fill the sink with hot water and cleaner, and either spray the tub and shower with cleaner, or fill the tub up with some hot water and add cleaner and let it soak. Put everything away that’s out and shouldn’t be, clean the mirror, counters, and toilet seat. Sweep or dry mop the floor. Wipe down the sink and tub/shower, and give the toilet bowl a scrub. Mop the floor.
- Sweep and mop the kitchen floor.
- Vacuum everything you can, and sweep everything you can’t.
- Walk outside of your house (don’t lock yourself out, please). Walk back in and see what catches your eye first. Go and deal with that.
- If you’re being inspected or your landlord is coming in for repairs, spend time on whatever area they’ll be focusing on.
- Give the whole place one more once-over and pay attention to anything you’ve missed so far.
- It’s an old trick, but if your place is a little funky-smelling, put a pan of water on the stove on low heat and add some citrus or cinnamon or vanilla. Don’t leave it unattended or forget about it.
- Take a shower, put on something clean, and eat something.
You can do this. It’s overwhelming, yes, but it is not impossible. You just need to do it. You have a list. You have directions. You have a whole bunch of Internet strangers who have been there before and who are cheering you on. You can do this, but you need to get started.
Why are you still here? GO. START. NOW.
the number of times in my past that I desperately wanted/needed someone to sit me down and tell me this stuff. I will never get back the hours and hours lost to headless-chicken mode, but it’s nice to know that in the last year I’ve learned so many coping mechanisms :D
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (2021)
Samsung Galaxy A30 (2019)
WRONG it's a Huawei P Smart Plus from 2018
I... was wrong? N-no.... its... impossible!
I made all the proper calculations... The dual camera, the separated flash, the fingerprint scanner!! Even the holo type backglass! My deduction was perfect-
Wh-what?!?!
The... the color..!! Whats going on here? You mean its not a trick of the light, but a gradient design?! Such an obvious tell, and I missed it?! No, that... thats impossible!!!
This can't be!!! I'll be ruined!! MY REPUTATION AS A GIMMICK BLOG!!! NO!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!!!
so i felt the full scope of the urgency and i locked in and i went to do it bored and do it sore and so on and so forth. but turns out im still disabled when i do that and i dont just choose to be disabled the rest of the time due to a character flaw. and so it didnt work. any solutions
any solutions folks
I ever tell you guys about my ethically dubious radio show back in college? The Mad Dad Hour?
it was an entire radio show built around perpetuating a very simple joke, but it was uniquely powerful in its capacity to prompt the reaction I was looking for.
so my slot was at the tail end of rush hour, and i got a fair number of listeners/callers who were on the way home from the office. And like, I had a lot of callers, who almost all wanted to request songs that really didn’t fit with the aesthetic. I had pitched a power pop show when i got my slot, but the callers were not having it; they invariably wanted classic rock.
this made sense in a way. if you think about the demographics of the people who listened to the radio for music in 2010 instead of their ipods or cds or whatever, you’d expect them to skew older right? accordingly, i quickly realized that almost all of the people who called to request songs were Dads of a Certain Age. It was honestly annoying at first - I’m all for most classic rock, but that wasn’t what the show was supposed to be.
And so one day, when i was feeling particularly annoyed with requests that just didn’t fit thematically, i came up with the joke that rapidly became the only reason I kept the show going. Per station rules, I had to play a certain number of pre-recorded PSAs during my show, and before I cut to one I was supposed to read out the song titles and artists for all the music i had played before the break. So this one day when i had to inform the world before the break that the song they just heard was, per a listener’s request, Hey Jude by the Beatles, I decided to do a goof. I said:
“and finally, that last song you heard was Hey Jude, which was of course written and performed by the Rolling Stones.”
I barely had time to get the ads going before the phone started ringing. See, I had been assuming people would realize i was making an obvious joke by claiming one of the most well-known Beatles tracks was a Stones song, but i had failed to consider that my listeners were mostly 55-70 year old dads who were irritated from a long day in the office.
And when those dads heard me, a millennial woman, get the artist of an extremely well-known beatles song WRONG???!
they HAD to call in to correct my ignorance. never in a polite way either, it was condescending and annoyed or nothing. and like, they were just SO personally insulted by my inaccurate reporting that it took a massive amount of effort for me to avoid cracking up during the call. I had never understood why some people would enjoy trolling random strangers on the internet before, but in that moment, I understood the appeal entirely.
obviously i did it again right before the next commercial break, immediately after playing Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen David Bowie.
the phone immediately began to ring.
“ARE YOU AN IDIOT?” one of the callers began, “DAVID BOWIE???? THAT WAS QUEEN!”
“I thought David Bowie was the lead singer of Queen though?” I replied with as much innocent earnestness as i could conjure.
I could hear an intake of breath as the infuriated boomer on the other end of the line struggled to figure out where to even start.
And thus, the Mad Dad Hour was born.
@eduards-stuff I kept doing the same joke for an hour a week for an entire year, and the dads NEVER caught on. After episode 1 of the new format I started taking the angry dad calls on air, which added another layer of hilarity to the whole concept.
My friends on campus knew that hay I was doing and enjoyed tuning in, but only one actual listener ever figured out what I was doing, and he was literally a random 30 year old guy from the netherlands with access to an early internet connection radio service. He was possibly my only actual fan. I only know about him because he went to the effort of making a skype and paying for international service so he could call in, and while I got a few calls from him, the first remains my favorite:
me: hi there, you’ve got TST-
him: *strained, wheezing dutch laughter*
me: hey, is everything o-
him: pfffHAHAHAAH YOU MAKE THEM SO MAD. THEY THINK SO LITTLE OF YOUUUUUUUU BUT THE MEN ARE THE ONES WHO ARE FOOLISH! HA! HA! HA! YOU HAVE DUPED THEM!
me: sir i do not know you and i have never even seen you but i am in romantic love with you.
I’ve been obsessed with this tiktok for days now
Person: "Hello sir." he pets the frog with one finger.
Person: "Have a good day. Actually wait a minute. You missed a bug, but I got you home boy. Hold on." he picks a bug up and throws it next to the frog.
Frog: turns around and eats the bug.
Person: "OHHHHH-" sings high pitched and angelic like he witnessed a miracle.


















