I never liked cleaning. Although don't get me wrong: I like my house spic-and-span. I just really don't want to be the one doing the cleaning. Why should I be stuck doing house cleaning if I work six days a week to put food in my family's mouths?



Now I'm in this predicament. I blame karma. I find myself cleaning the bathroom almost twiced a month. As much as I find cleaning the bathroom irritating and disgusting, I really don't want to have my wife kneel down on that muck and grim. So whenever it's high time to clean up the bathroom, I go in ahead and get the job done myself.

And so my war with grout begins. The floor tiles themselves are difficult to clean, but add the spaces and the cement in-between the tiles and I find myself losing the battle. I have to find the smallest old toothbrush in the house to even get to them, and as if the dirt has taken root inside it, as much as I scrub, I can never seem to remove it completely.

So in the end, I do my best. I scrub and scrub at the tiles and grout, and while the tiles end up sparkly clean, I am never satisfied with the space in between. Perhaps it's the perfectionist in me (which is what makes me a good do-it-yourself person): I hated cleaning, and now I hated how I could not clean the floor well.

I give up. No more cleaning the dirty-beyond-hope bathroom floor, because in the end, frustration just gets the better of me. But, as I've said, I really want to keep the house as clean and hygienic as I want. So I looked around and found a professional grout cleaner. Who knew they'd be on the first page of a search engine's results? I talked to my wife and persuaded her to have them look at it.

I just hope they do a better job at it than I did.