I am not fond of cleaning. I never was, and I never will. Even as a kid, my mother tried all types of shams to make me clean the room, from innocent promises of sweets to vicious threats of being denied my allowance for the week. Well, my mother, the sweetest angel, rarely went to either extreme, so I only ended up cleaning my room for about twice a year.



These days, my wife is the one constantly annoyed at my apparent lack of cleaning genes. In these cases, I always ensure her that I do like a clean house; what I don't like is having to do the task myself. As half the breadwinner in the house, I believe I have things to do that are more important than trivial cleaning.

So, for the most part, I'm enjoying the compromise; I see no cleaning, but during house-upkeep day, I have to fix whatever's wrong in the house, while the wife and kids focus on general cleaning duties. All I do is mind the plumbing, repair a few broken furniture, and work at a leisurely pace on house expanding projects. I don't need to clean at all.

However, I still reserve the right to volunteer cleaning. I know I just said I hated it, but no self-respecting husband would let his wife clean the dirty, mucked up bathroom floor. So whenever she starts picking up the bathroom cleaning tools, I stop her and insist on doing it myself instead. And so, twice a month I find myself scrubbing at bathroom grout.

I must let out my frustrations and say that grout cleaning is not an easy task. Not one product can remove the dirt with ease; one has to muscle it for the grout to even return to its normal color. See, once the grime sets in, it just stays there, as if it became one with the grout itself.

I hate bathroom cleaning.