Unplanned Cleaning

In IT (or IS - whatever you want to call all the computers) we have two kinds of outages.

Planned outages are those that are, uh, planned. We know we have to bring something down to do something. We plan these for weeks, months, sometimes (if we are not so good at it) we may plan for years. We tell everyone about the outage so they can make alternative arrangements like taking along lunch or finding a new job. We take all the steps we possibly can to ensure that the outage is for the shortest time possible and we can return to normal operating procedure as quickly as possible.

Unplanned outages are those that just happen either with no or very little warning. These are bad. Uh, very bad. After these, some people have to find new jobs.

Now cast your mind back to my previous post about my New Year cleaning frenzy (or just click here). I have been on a manic spree but careful and bit systematic in my approach. I started with the kitchen, moved into the living room, then the dining room (I have lots of crystal and glassware that I rarely use). Next week I start on the bedrooms.

The one spot in my kitchen that I didn't quite attack was under the fridge.

I love my fridge. It's one of those American double doored water and ice cubes in the door style fridges. You Americans should not take your humongous fridges for granted. We Brits put up with the tiniest, useless wee little bitty fridges you have ever seen in your entire life and it used to drive me crazy. Then I bought a big house with a big kitchen and I bought myself a big fridge!

I've read that you should never move a fridge until you move house. And even then you just might want to sell the fridge with the house cause you can bet your bottom dollar that after you move the fridge it will break. Has something to do with mixing up the chemicals and all that - blah blah blah. And sure enough the last time we moved, we moved our fridge in and it didn't last 2 months and we had to go and get ourselves a new fridge. Course, that's when we got this big American fridge so you didn't hear me complaining too loudly.

Now I am super duper careful with this fridge. So I decided that I could skip the area under the fridge.

But I had an unplanned event which led to my unplanned cleaning.

My beloved husband is a little bit clumsy. Oh who am I foolin'? This man is like a bull in a china closet. He trips over his own feet several times a day and it's not like he's got on new shoes. He regularly breaks glasses and plates when unloading the dishwasher and I get extremely nervous when we go to other people's homes for dinner and they've set out the good china.

Here I was quietly typing up my last blog post. I had just hit the publish button and -wack splatter- my husband had knocked something out of the fridge reaching for a beer. I looked round to see an entire jug of single cream had hit the floor and was spreading all over the place.

My clumsy husband is not exactly a man of action either. He just stood there watching the disaster get worse. Finally he blinked (and no, I didn't yell at him) and got busy with a bucket and a cutting board and a scraper - not exactly the tools a woman would assemble for the job but I thought ok, let's see how he does this.

I watched long enough to realise that wasn't going to work or if it was it was going to take all night and still wouldn't be clean. So I suggested he take the cream soaked rug down to the laundry in an attempt to get rid of him.

I got everything I could see cleaned up but then the moment of truth arrived. I had to get under the fridge.

Husband proved his usefulness by moving the fridge and my worst nightmare came true. Dust, dirt, pet hair, dog food, cat food, fridge magnets, pet toys, baby toys, bouncing balls, and various other unidentifiable objects appeared. GROSS!

It took a broom, a hoover, and 10 floor wipes to get the floor clean and my husband's strength to replace the fridge back to its rightful position. It took every ounce of self control I possess not to yell at my husband or deck him when he smiled and proclaimed "Never a dull moment!" when it was all over.

That's my unplanned cleaning session for the day sorted.