Gross, or Totally Normal?

I was vacuuming my stairs tonight in preparation for an exciting guest that's coming in on the train tonight at midnight.  He leaves tomorrow at midnight. It's all very mysterious and wonderful.

So, I'm vacuuming, and I'm thinking about a book I just read called The Help.  I'm thinking about those women and how they worked harder in one day cleaning houses than I have probably ever worked to clean a house.  My excuse is typically "I'm too hot."  Well, unfortunately for me, these tough women were cleaning homes in the South in the Summer without air conditioning... I have nothing left.

So I'm cleaning because I have no excuses left and my mysterious visitor will be here in a few hours.  I'm  now vacuuming the stairs.  It occurs to me that we have lived here for three months and a few days and the stairs have been vacuumed twice.  Once by Devin, and once now today by ME.

Is that gross, or totally normal?  How often do you vacuum your stairs? I don't know what the norm is on stair vacuuming.  So, for those of you who have stairs, please, PLEASE be honest. We're all friends here, inside a very secure trust circle.  How often do you do clean those stairs?  And for those of you that don't have stairs, have you ever gone to someone's house and noticed their stairs at all, be they clean or icky?  Be honest now, remember the sacred trust circle.  It's ok, nothing will leak.

Ok, now back to cleaning. Yes, I stopped in the middle of my cleaning to ask of you this burning question. That's how important it is to me.

Can't wait to see you Grandpa!

Comments

  1. ok, i haven't had stairs for a long time, and i am trying to remember my chores growing up.....

    either we vacuumed the stairs about once a week when we vacuumed the rest of the house (if it was once a week...i don't quite remember now lol) or we only vacuumed the stairs if we spilled something, or if guests were coming to visit.... lol :) i'm sure your stairs aren't gross :) xoxo

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  2. I only vacuum the stairs when they start to look gross, thats probably every 3 weeks or so. Or when I know someone will see them!

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  3. I was just thinking today that our stairs need to be vacuumed. I don't think that they have been vacuumed since my brother and his family visited in December. It's one of the areas that get overlooked in our house!

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  4. At my house growing up it was a requirement to vacuum the stairs when the adjoining room was vacuumed. However, in my house growing up mashed potatoes could not be eaten as a main dish and now in my own home they often are. So, think on that.

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  5. My stairs probably went a good year before first being vacuumed; gross, I know, but I really had no way to vacuum them. Now I vacuum them every 2-3 months, or whenever I happen to have the extra energy left over after cleaning/vacuuming the entire downstairs. The lower half of my stairs get vacuumed the most; it's been a couple months (or more) now that I've been telling myself to vacuum the upper half above the landing, but that would require hefting the vacuum up to, at least, the landing, which I really don't feel like doing right now at 7+ months pregnant... but I will admit that EVERY time I walk up those stairs I think about how badly they need to be vacuumed. And then I get to my room to get us all ready for bed, and forget all about it... until the next day. lol

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  6. How about Gross, AND totally normal?

    We have stairs--EVERYWHERE in this house it seems--and they RARELY get vacuumed. And I'm not the only one that doesn't think of them, my MIL doesn't, either. She'll clean the whole house for company and forget the stairs. It's not something one generally thinks of, I guess.

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  7. I hardly ever vacuum, period (our only wall-to-wall carpet is upstairs). So the stairs only get done if Dan wants to do them. Or, possible, I might have done them for Emily's birthday party.

    Of course, Dan wants to buy a dustbuster, and one of the reasons is that we could do the stairs.

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  8. My stairs are actually wood, so I have to sweep them. They are also right inside the door (our house being a silly split level) so they get really dirty. With all of that background info, I still only sweep them MAYBE once a month. I'd probably do it a lot less frequently if I had stairs like yours. :) Feel any better yet?

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  9. Growing up with lots of kids to get the stairs dirty and to do the vacuuming it was once a week.

    Now with just Jared and I to do the vacuuming and just one kid and two cats it is once a month.

    Normal is a range and I would say you are not an outlier or even a standard deviation from that range.

    And why be normal anyways? Even if the opposite is to be gross? :)

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  11. We've lived here almost 2 years and I can say I have vacummed the stairs MAYBE a handful of times...but our stairs aren't typically used everyday...we use the upstairs but not a whole lot and we usually don't have shoes on. So i think you are totally fine. I'd say if you use them a lot maybe once a month or 2? :-) But i'm no cleaning expert! Miss you guys! Have fun with your mysterious visitor ;-)

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  12. I'm pretty sure that vacuuming stairs falls under the "Mother-in-law" catagory. So they only have to be vacuumed when there is someone special coming to visit. Now that Grandma Homer won't be visiting me any more I don't think I EVER have to clean my stairs again! hahaha

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