Last Tuesday, I posted this cutesy little pic on Instagram:
Ummm, I planned to spend “some time that morning” cleaning it up.
I’d been putting off cleaning this mess because it just made more sense to wait until my 7th grader was done sawing styrofoam for a school project.
I’m excessively logical like that.
Meanwhile, the static-filled-styrosnow had drifted to the adjoining rooms.
I started by brushing attempting to brush the snow off the table onto the floor. Because I was going to vacuum it anyway. Duh.
Except that didn’t really work. Foamlets of snow stuck to me and floated through the air and generally didn’t even make it to the floor.
Then I went and got the vacuum cleaner.
It kind of sort of seemed like it was sucking up the snow. And then I noticed the snow coming out the back of the vacuum cleaner . . . with HAIR!!
What?!?!?! Oh yeah. That’s right. A few days ago, when I used it after cutting a kid’s hair, I realized it wasn’t working right. Even after I changed out the bag, it still didn’t work right. I have vague memories of finishing that job with a broom and dustpan, but I’m pretty sure I thought sticking it in the closet for a few days and pretending nothing was wrong would solve the problem.
Because I do that.
Hope problems will go away if I just ignore them.
But ignoring hadn’t worked this time, and now I had staticky foam snow and staticky hair all over my floor. And the BROWNIES were coming!!!
The Brownies were coming, people!!!
And my carpet was bad. Really bad. With no Bible Study OR church home group the previous week, I’d put it off until the last minute, and this was the last minute.
All my handy dandy tools were failing me, so I followed the example of the woman in my life who has never bothered with a gadget: my mother-in-law. No dustpan, no mopbucket, no dishwasher, no cutting board.
Coming from a gadget-loving family myself, it took me a while to realize that new-fangled inventions simply weren’t going to be used in my mother-in-law’s house. And yet her house was always perfectly neat and tidy.
She has said before (when I asked where her dustpan was) that she just uses a wet paper towel to wipe up the pile when she sweeps.
That seemed like a better solution than sending a pile o’ hair ‘n styrosnow floating through the air, hoping that a piece or two might fall in the dustpan.
It worked.
Ish.
Even though I had to give up on the idea that I could get it all (or even most of it), getting down on my hands and knees (over and over) to wipe up piles with wet paper towels made a noticable difference.
Now, if only I could have blown up a photo of the “before” scene and pinned it to the wall in the dining room to prove I had really done something.
Not that Brownies care.
Update: I learned on Sunday afternoon that styrosnow is significantly less staticky when mixed with a week’s worth of dust. This makes it much easier to sweep into a dustpan. Don’t say I’ve never shared a useful tip.
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I quit using Easter grass for the same reason. That stuff sticks to every thing. I started making snakes or worms out of green netting to avoid the mess.
Styro-snow is, quite simply, proof of the existence of Satan. And, oh joy, GT season is about to be upon us again, isn’t it? The only thing I have found that seems to effectively do the job without taking forever and driving me insane(r) is picking it up with however much packaging tape is necessary. Wasteful and anti-environmental, yes, but once it’s on there, it’s pretty much dealt with, static be damned.
Oops–should have read “GT project season”.
Thanks for the tip – this weekend it’s (way past) time to pack up my way-too-big nativity collection in the display case at church (and the reason it can be so big – the collection, that is). A number of my nativities are stored in a box with styrofoam. There seems to be no way to unpack or pack without breaking off tiny little pieces! It makes quite the mess. Fortunately there is a restroom relatively close to the display case so I can go get wet towels (usually I just ignore and leave for the janitor, who is a church member so he knows who’s making the mess!). I figure since Lent starts next week, it’s really really time to put Christmas away. Though honestly, most people don’t care that I leave them up so long, they are sad when they go away. Last year my excuse for being so late was pneumonia. This year there is no excuse!
My favorite household hint of all time – ” I learned on Sunday afternoon that styrosnow is significantly less staticky when mixed with a week’s worth of dust. This makes it much easier to sweep into a dustpan.”
This is so me.
Still laughing!
No cutting board? But, but, but… How?
It’s truly shocking. She just cuts on a plate. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong since she’s been doing it for MANY years.
Oh yeah, but that’s my little issue… I can’t stand the sound/feeling of a knife scratching on a plate. But I must say, it does seem hygienic!
You have taught me so many things about myself that I didn’t even realise, things like leaving cupboard doors open, walking past a wrapper and not picking it up, I resist doing stuff on weekends, and now today…sticking it in the cupboard and pretending nothing’s wrong. *sigh*
Someone once told me that there are only two problems that go away with time…snow and puberty. Well, now we maybe need to add the caveat that it’s real snow, not styro-snow! (yup, I’m a great procrastinator too, not that it’s a skill I’ve advertised in a job interview!)
LOL! I hate Styrofoam – for that reason and more. One year, I decided to make my kids and nieces and nephews ‘beanbag’ chairs for Christmas after seeing one a friend made with the foam packing peanuts. For whatever reason, one of the local lumber yard had boatloads of them – and even provided huge trash bags if I wanted to haul them away. Well heck yeah! I had 8 of those suckers to make, I’d take all they had.
On the way home, I had to stop at the gas station and just thought I had a happy cashier. Once home, however, a quick trip into the bathroom revealed that I had a bunch of teeny, tiny pieces of Styrofoam … in my nostrils. Yup. I’d been breathing through my nose while loading the bags and some of those static-y, almost invisible pieces had stuck to the bottom of my nose. And since they were there when I walked into my bathroom, they were there at the lumber company and the gas station….
Yup. I’ve hate Styrofoam ever since. 😀
The paper towel trick is great! This is what I learned from my mother, for those times when there’s too much static and the broom just won’t sweep everything into the dustpan: a dryer sheet. Yes, it’s the same recipe as your MIL’s idea, but with different ingredients. Those crafty ladies were on the same page! It definitely helps to cut through the static, which was all I could think about when I saw ‘Styrofoam snow’… 🙂
I must share that I came into the living room one time to find the kids had been playing snowstorm with a box full of packing peanuts. But not just throwing the peanuts – crumbling them into tiny pieces first. I was too exhausted just looking at it to clean it up for days. Then the unthinkable – an unexpected guest! Seriously, who comes by without calling anymore?? And what the H*LL is that stuff made of anyway???
A packing peanut story for you: A friend of mine was in the process of moving and someone had tripped and dropped a box of the bio-degradable packing peanuts ALL OVER the driveway outside. So instead of picking it up, my friend, along with her friends thought it would be a good idea to get out the garden hose to melt the packing peanuts all at once for entertainment (my friends are interesting). Anyway…guess what happens when you melt the bio-degradable packing peanuts…whatever surface they are on gets REALLY SLIPPERY. So for the rest of the move, they were slipping and sliding all over the place to get stuff out of the house. Someone finally got the garden hose back out and hosed the driveway back down to get rid of the ‘slime’.
That’s hilarious!!