Next Thing You Know, I am Filling Up the Tub

Our house came with the window treatments which we liked a lot...score!  After moving in, I noticed that the mini-blinds upstairs were very dirty...unscore (that's the opposite of score right?).  I tried spraying them with cleaner and wiping with a paper towel while hanging, but that only put a dent in the dirt.  I had read up on the internets about how one could wash mini-blinds in the bathtub.  This was clearly for crazy people...enter pregnancy crazy.

I was planning on cleaning the upstairs tonight...but got distracted by the dirt on the mini-blinds...next thing you know, I am filling up the tub.  I only added some off-brand dish soap to get the job done.  While the tub was filling, I laid out some old towels in the hallway...which Guinness promptly laid down on...

"It was so nice of you to set out these towels for me!"

Next I grabbed the first set of mini-blinds and set them in the tub to soak.  While they soaked, I washed that window.  Then I scrubbed the mini-blinds with a brush.  After a good scrubbing, I held them 90 degrees from the direction that they hang, and rinsed them with the shower.  (This both rinsed them and drained the top and bottom parts of the blinds.)

Then the mini-blinds went on the towel to dry...but first I went over them one last time with the brush to make sure that I got everything.  I repeated with each set of blinds.

1 - small towels for drying

2 - brush for scrubbing

3 - note by each set of blinds telling me which window they came from...no way pregnancy brain would allow me to remember that sort of information!

Penny has learned to just rest in bed while I am on a cleaning frenzy.  Guinness needs to track my every move.  The blind cleaning was a little traumatic for him as the hallway filled with blinds, and he was unable to follow me from room to room.

"My mommy has lost her damn mind, and I can't follow 

her...so I will rest my head on the stairs and sulk."

Finally I wiped down the blinds one last time with some small towels and hung them back up to finish drying.  They are MUCH better than they were before.  I tried to get a "before" picture of the blinds to show the dirt, but my crappy camera didn't get any good pictures.  Here is a pic of the bathtub after the cleaning to prove how bad they were...

Happy cleaning!