During House Renovations - Scrubbing Day with Pippi Longstocking

When I was little I used to have amazing birthday parties and when I got a bit older I used to have amazing sleepover birthday parties.  After all the party games and the salad platter and the giant bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken (before it became KFC) and the oranges filled with jelly and ... no wait, I'm going to have to write a separate post about how much I enjoyed my birthday parties.  Moving on - after all that, we would fill the loungeroom with mattresses and get into pyjamas and sleeping bags ready to watch videos.

My parents would hire a VCR for the occassion (a VCR is like a BluRay Machine Thingy or a DVD Player but chunkier).  This would happen for my birthday in June and again for my sister's in July.  In my mind my parents hired a VCR, returned it, hired it again and returned it again for several years in a row before they thought to purchase one.  I'm pretty sure other people were using VCRs on a daily basis but it was a special birthday treat for us.

Every year my parents would hire two movies - 'The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking' and 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'.  I loved those movies and I reckon we watched them every year, I suppose it was twice a year, throughout our childhood.  The only thing I remember from Pippi Longstocking is the theme song and the part of this clip from 0:15 - 0:16 but this preview makes me want to watch the movie again.



Getting closer to the point...

I was pleased to find polished floorboards in the bedroom, except for the half a dozen that were replaced with plain timber after the cellar fire of 1999.   I was again pleased to find polished floorboards in the loungeroom.  I was not pleased to find them encrusted with the black rubber of the underlay that had been crushed into the wood over at least 30 years.

After scraping off the majority of the black rubber, which was like super adhesive charcoal, it was time to scrub the floor.

Enter Pippi Longstocking.

Sadly, there were handles on my scrubbing brushes so I couldn't strap them to my feet and glide across the room but after more scraping and lots of scrubbing, I strapped paper towels to my feet to lightly clean the floor, or was it to dry the floor?  Either way, it was most efficient and made me feel like I was Pippi Longstocking.

Pippi Longstocking is coming into your world.

More photos of me mucking around during House Renovations:
During House Renovations - Flipping Underlay Residue
During House Renovations - The Varnish Discovery 


Photos of House Renovations where I'm not mucking around:
House Renovations - Bedroom
House Renovations - Loungeroom

A tragic story about curtains which features the loungeroom floorboards:
Out, damned spot! Out, I say!

Out, damned spot! Out, I say!

It should be noted that I haven't got any blood on my hands and no kings were harmed in the writing of this post.  There was a slightly dirty patch in the middle of the loungeroom curtains and I really wanted it clean.  It was created by our cat Prancer brushing against the curtains when he jumped onto the window sill but I'm not sentimental enough to keep dirt on the curtains in memory of our cat.  I am quite forgetful though so I continued getting rid of carpet and making the floorboards look presentable.  See During House Renovations - Scrubbing Day with Pippi Longstocking, During House Renovations - Flipping Underlay Residue and House Renovations - Loungeroom.

When the floor was done: Ooooh, look at the beautiful floorboards!  But the curtains are still dirty! Raarrrr!

Below is the sound effect which played in my head when I noticed the dirty patch on the curtains.  I've never seen the movie but I often get sound effects from things I haven't seen.  It might be frightening if you've seen the movie but you can just imagine she has washed her hair with shampoo and discovered she has no conditioner.  The sound effect works for anything.  UPDATE: I accidentally played it with the volume up loud and it was terrifying.  I had no choice but to delete it.  How dare the original Psycho violin screech be so different to the noise that I make. 

 

That's it!  I am washing the curtains.

Nnooooooooooo...

ooooooooooooo....

ooooooooooooo....

oooooooooooooo....

It's still good.  Just a little shreddy?

Fine then!  I will buy new curtains.  I guess some products are not made to last 25 years in the sun.

Several weeks later I went to Spotlight to buy new curtains.  I had to buy 2 packets of curtains to fit the width of the windows.  I fitted the hooks and put them up ready for the grand unveiling.  Yay! New Curtains. There was no grand unveiling.  The mechanism to open and close the curtains didn't work.

I took down the curtains and disassembled the curtain track.  I enlisted the help of a couple of YouTube videos to figure out how to re-thread the cord.  I had removed the old cord and was now replacing it with itself after finding out that the brand new cord I bought was 2 metres too short.  I couldn't figure out the master pulleys and the pulleys and the under and over so I got my Dad to do it for me. He also put the curtain track back on the wall.

I was pretty impressed at having a curtain track with functioning pulleys.  Wheeee!  Look how it glides so smoothly.  I care not for curtains.  I can make the little rolling things roll.

I eventually put the curtains up and they opened and closed.  Yay! New Curtains.

A few days later the house began to smell and I thought something had died.  It was the curtains.  They were still as alive as curtains can be but they caused the house to smell of dead animal.  I took the curtains down, confiscated their hooks and washed the stinky curtains.  I banished them outside so they could think about what they'd done.

The curtains weren't coping very well behind bars.  They were becoming more and more twisted as the days went by.  I brought them in and they are back where they belong.  Yay! New Curtains.

Please, curtains, I don't want to make this story any longer.  Behave yourselves.

Backward Idea #1 - Sweeping Coins

I found out today that the 1 and 2 cent pieces I was going to cash in at the bank cannot be cashed in at the bank.  It's probably lucky that my sister informed me of this devastating news because it has saved me the embarrassment of standing at a bank holding a small snap lock bag of coins, looking for somewhere to dispose of them.

My two year old nephew found the little bag of coins, I opened the bag for him and he poured them onto the couch to play with.  By the time my sister came to pick him and his baby brother up there were coins across the whole loungeroom.  After my sister and nephews had left I started collecting the coins with a broom.  Before I knew it I was sweeping the floor.  Tricked into housework!  How rude.

Then I thought: some people are very driven by monetary rewards and competition.

What if people who feel unmotivated to do housework could give themselves a financial incentive?

Step 1: Throw coins onto floor being sure to scatter them under furniture.

Step 2: Sweep coins into a pile, inadvertently sweeping dust into a pile.

Step 3: Pocket coins, bin dust.

If you don't sweep thoroughly, you miss out on money.  Unlike my efforts tonight, make sure you know how many coins you have to start with so you can count how many you swept.  Also, use something more exciting than 1 and 2 cent pieces.

Look at my haul - I must have done at least $2 of sweeping.

Sweeping Coins

Note: Only use this method if your cleaning apparatus is a broom.  I don't think it adapts well for vacuum cleaning.