My Monster

I am referring to my birthday present:Beau ordered it for me and had it shipped to the door- what an incredible gift! I was so excited to try it out. I wanted to use it to clean for a few weeks before I gave it an accurate review, but it has been three weeks, so I can confidently tell you that I love this product.

First, it cleans with only steam. That means that I no longer need to purchase bleach and other more expensive cleaning products. The manufacturer claims that the steam reaches a temperature of 250 degrees. From my few weeks of use, I would say that the number is almost accurate. It gets really hot.

Beau got the cleaner off of Overstock.com. It was refurbished, which I love. I buy as many more expensive refurbished products as I can. They usually come with a warranty as they are still from the manufacturer. But know this: if you do buy off of Overstock, the steam cleaner does not come with all of the original attachments, like the nylon scrubber brush.

But that ended up to be perfectly fine! I use the floor brush to get my travertine clean. You can attach a rag to the brush, and then it gets every little milk spot and pasta trail. I cleaned my floors the first week. The second week, I decided to try the detail nozzle in my bathrooms.

Holy cow.

You know that orange or black mold that stubbornly lives in the crevices of your shower? This machine literally melts that stuff away. Seriously! I watched in disbelief as the concentrated shot of steam quickly broke down that nasty stuff. It takes me large blocks of time to scrub that grime off with bleach and a stiff brush. And even that doesn't always work. But the steam cleaner does. It also gets into grout and blasts that stubborn dirt away. Then I just wipe the area with a rag and all of the yuck is gone.

So I have used the steam cleaner to clean my bathrooms and my kitchen, along with my floors, for the past two weeks. I must admit, using the Monster has added to my total cleaning time. It usually takes me about 90 minutes to clean the house every Monday morning. But now I am finding dirty floorboards, dark corners with year-old dirt, and undersides of chairs with caked-on-milk. It has taken me about three hours the past few weeks, but I am sure that time will diminish as I feel like bigger cleaning projects are tackled.

God has been gracious to me the past few weeks. The first two weeks, the kids slept in past 8:00, so after my walk with Laura and my quiet time, I almost had enough time to get the whole hosue done.

However, some genius (not a mommy of preschoolers) established Daylight Savings Time and my children were up before I left for my walk this morning. At 5:45. (I also praise God for my understanding husband). So after I got home, I made breakfast and we did school instead of my normal routine. Then I sent them outside to play and was able to get a good chunk of cleaning done. I have yet to study my Bible, but naps look favorable today.

So I just wanted to share this find with you. If I were in charge of the world, all mommies would have one of these. Also, there would be no Daylight Savings Time.