Do's and Don'ts of Floor Care

DO keep your kitchen floor clean so that when spills happen, cleanup is easy. Floors which haven't seen a broom since before your vacation will have dirt, dog hair, cheese wax, bottle caps, dry grass, blackberry leaves, and all sorts of other detritus on them. These will get mixed up with whatever you spill, making cleanup all the more difficult.

DO keep enough clean towels handy to soak up almost anything. Having to run to the laundry room for towels with the spilled substance all over your feet will only increase the mess. Not exponentially, but something like that.

DON'T lift a bag of groceries while looking the other way and accidentally swing it into the glass bottle of extra-virgin olive oil, knocking the bottle over and breaking it so that oil and broken glass shower all over your three-year-old son's head and body.

***

Gabe was there, fortunately, standing right there. He rushed Rhone to the shower and then painstakingly combed all the glass out of Rhone's hair. Meanwhile, I attempted to clean up the glass-and-oil soup of the floor, made much worse by my failure to follow Rules #1 and 2, above. (The whole situation of course caused by my failure to follow Rule #3.) Despite a shampoo, Rhone's hair is still extremely oily. But we've combed through again and I can't find any more glass.

This could have been really, really bad if the jagged end of the bottle had fallen differently onto him. I literally shudder to think. He's ok, just one little scratch on the cheek. And our floor's clean now.

***

Appended the next morning:

DON'T, if you have a really stupid dog, leave the oily paper towels in the garbage unless you want to clean up a portion of the mess again the next day. Grrrrrr.