Cleaning Tips for Bachelors (by Admiral Bugsy Kludge)

One thing that I love about the Internet is that if you're a writer, or consider yourself a writer, or even if you only consider yourself a vaguely half-assed writer, you don't have to come up with any great, lengthy amounts of prose to pad out a really half-assed idea into an article. Just so long as you're able to type enough bullshit to fill a browser window, the viewer's more than likely going to be happy, and go tell all of his friends about the goofy half-assed idea he just read on that thing called the Internet. Anyway, here's one of those half-assed ideas, and here I am padding it out with lengthy prose. So sue me. I'm about to give you an education here, and it's not even costing you college tuition, so just shut up and stop giving me lip, okay?

Anyway, I was about to school you on something that you might find useful in the future: house-cleaning. It's something you do when you can't find the floor through the mess of pizza boxes, beer bottles and porno mags. Not only does it enable you to find loose change on the floor, but it'll also impress all those girls you've heard about. House-cleaning is sanitary as well. Like you care, you slob. Some people, older people mostly, make house-cleaning their hobby. Others, mostly poor people, make house-cleaning their vocation. Rich people are usually not at all involved in the process of house-cleaning, but I'm not writing this with them in mind.

House-cleaning has a varied and fascinating history.

When you finally decide to start your house-cleaning, you'll find that you will need certain utensils. The first one, which should be at least vaguely familiar to you, is called a garbage bag. All the shit that you keep pushing out of your way when looking for your cigarettes goes in there. The next object is one of the most amazing objects I've run across in all of my travels; I don't know if I've seen a device with a larger variety of uses. A sponge. The sponge is the most important and diverse tool for the cleaning of the house, as it can be used to on almost any surface in the house: walls, floors, kitchen appliances, yourself, mirrors, computers, assorted foodstuffs, the list goes on. The final item that will be required for this house-cleaning thing is some sort of solvent. It really doesn't matter what type or brand, the products are all pretty much the same as far as I can tell. There is usually one aisle of the supermarket that sells only products of this nature. They'll slap different labels on them: glass cleaner, dishwashing soap, laundry detergent, abrasive cleanser, non-abrasive cleanser, laundry detergent. It doesn't matter. They all pretty much do the exact same thing once water gets mixed up with them. They make little bubbles and clean stuff. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention about sponges. Buy two of them. One for the toilet, and one for everything else. And keep 'em seperate, maybe even label them. You don't want the toilet sponge giving the general sponge any ideas. So anyway, garbage bags, sponges and solvent is what you need. There are other things if you want to get fancy, or technical, and maybe someday you'll want to look into these other items, such as vacuum cleaners, brooms, mops, toilet bowl cleaners, and dusters. I wouldn't necessarily recommend those now, though. You'll end up with some if you ever get married.

So now we'll assume you've made the trip to the store and have your house-cleaning utensils. Good. Now we can really get to the meat of this process. First, throw everything you don't use away. I find that a good rule of thumb is that if I haven't touched the object intentionally in the past week, then I don't need it. You'd be amazed at what sort of space you can free up in your house if you follow this process. Anyway, find the nearest garbage dumpster and deposit all of that stuff there. Now we're cooking! Next, put on some punk rock music if you have some at your disposal. I've found that punk rock is the best genre of music to listen to while cleaning house. I'm not sure why; I haven't been over to many clean punk rock houses, but this seems to work. Take your sponge (not the toilet sponge) and get it kind of wet. Now, apply some solvent to it, and start scrubbing a surface. After the surface has been appropriately scrubbed, or if you start getting sick of that particular surface, rinse out your sponge, and go over the surface once more. It is actually important to do this thing of giving the surface a good once over without the solvent, because otherwise it tends to eat through crap. Like paint, or wood. That sort of thing. So rinse it, and there's usually no permanent damage. So it's easy as that. Them's the basics. Just apply that routine to every surface (except the toilet! Hit the toilet with the toilet sponge.) in your house, and you're all set.

Now, some advanced maneuvers. Oh, but first let me explain something to you about toilet cleaning. I suppose you think that you don't need to clean the toilet because it's just going to get gross and dirty all over again. Well, that's certainly true, but the crux of the matter is that you never really know when the next time is that you're drunk and emptying the contents of your stomach directly into that thing. It might be tomorrow, it might be next week, but it's probably going to happen. And when it happens, it's best if you aren't being bothered by loose pubic hairs and dried pee while you're doing it. I think. Anyway, the advanced maneuvers. Okay, actually at this point, I've got to concede that I really don't know many advanced maneuvers myself, but I'll pass along the few I know. The main one is that if you're going to try and clean any surface that's been hit with wine, blood or both, don't even bother. That stuff just doesn't come out. Just paint over the area in question. That usually takes care of it. Also, you can usually clean off the majority of burns from fireworks and other sulfurous materials if you scrub hard enough with your sponge, but this will sometimes remove a portion of the surface along with it. Again, just paint over it. Those are the advanced techniques.

Do this, then take a look at your house! Amazing what a little "elbow grease" will do. The ladies will be over in no time flat. Just sit back, relax, and for God's sake, don't touch anything! You might get it dirty.

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Admiral Bugsy Kludge is an Official Graffiti Inspector and a pirate. He has attempted to teach community classes on house-cleaning in the past.