Spotless

In the course of a busy weekend, it was unavoidable that I was going to have to do some cleaning. The living room rug was getting crunchy again, and I had a bit of a Catholic moment when I thought I saw the face of the Madonna in the grime on the tiles behind the hotplates.


I don't like vacuuming. It's noisy and there's no way, short of hefting all the furniture back and forth, to get the all the dust, dead spiders and bits of lost danish from those tricky little niches around table legs and lamp bases. But when I do vacuum, I go at it with all the manly gusto I can muster. It's a good thing I do, because that ingrained dirt needs some work to shift. I was ripping the vacuum cleaner back and forth on the rug, causing it to ripple and shiver like a newly washed dog, and throwing up little clouds of loose dust. After a few moments of that, the area around the rug looked like a miniature snowstorm had passed through the room at ankle level.


But I got there in the end. Apparently parts of the rug are actually white, not beige. Who knew?


In a moment of madness, I decided to clean the top of the rangehood as well. I like to think that I'm a pretty healthful cook, so I'm at a loss to explain exactly how that much grease and general disgusting oily goo accumulated up there. Perhaps The Flatmate has been deep frying whole dugongs while I'm out. I tried Spray 'n' Wipe, which did absolutely nothing, and then Jif, which did almost absolutely nothing. Then I found some Instant Sugar Soap in the cupboard. I don't know how it got there, but then that's nothing new. My mother often leaves strange cleaning fluids in my cupboards, like a hygienist version of a missionary leaving Gideon's Bibles in hotel rooms.


I read the label, which pronounced it suitable for rangehoods. I sprayed it on, left it on for a few seconds, then wiped it off with a paper towel. The effect was remarkable. The grease and dust came away like magic. As did the printed labels on the light and fan switches, and the Westinghouse logo on the lower left corner.


It seems a shame that the next owner of my house will have to use trial and error to learn which switch does what on my rangehood, and its manufacturer will be a mystery for all time. Still, it could be worse - at least I don't have the deluxe model with the 'Self-Destruct' or 'Vote For The Greens' buttons.