1. Wait until it is long overdue.
2. Tell your husband it’s his turn, and ask him to do it.
3. If said husband is out of town and says “no” from 2,000 miles away, take a deep breath and accept that you will have to do it yourself.
4. THINK about cleaning the toilet all day.
5. Complain to 15-year-old son about how poorly designed American toilets are, and how hard they are to clean.
6. Go to bed.
7. Next day, decide to clean the toilet after your coffee.
8. Decide to clean the toilet after your breakfast.
9. Decide to clean the toilet after laundry, vacuuming, and emptying the dishwasher.
10. Decide you are not going to clean the toilet right now, but just clean the bathroom mirror.
11. Clean the mirror with Windex and paper towels.
12. Go ahead and clean the sink area while at it.
13. What the heck, spray the top of the toilet with the Windex.
14. Compose blog post in your head as you start the first wipe-down.
15. Stop, and go downstairs to your computer and write blog post before you forget.
16. Feel guilty that you are writing blog post rather than finishing up the job.
17. Go back upstairs and finish the job.
18. Ajax and brush part.
19. Final touches. Chase wet dust all around the seat with your Windexed paper towel.
20. Deem it “good enough.”
carlasonheim.wordpress.com 
Love your step by step instructions! If only I can train my dog to clean house, I’d be in good shape.
Ha ha!!! This so made me chuckle! :))) Someone else who does exactly the same thing as me. Can’t believe it!!!
😀
omgoodness! i can’t believe the are other people who go through the same thought process as me regarding the toilet! ;o)
I said I would do it when I get home. Oh well, I guess it’s too late…
Dearest Carla,
Don’t you have another man in the house? You can teach him using your blog! It’s called doing a favor for the next woman in his life…. she will owe you! Of course, there are the backsliders, but at least he will know how! It’s not rocket science! But, I really wanted to know if the Ajax left any interesting patterns on the floor?
Ah, but Wes has his OWN toilet to clean!!!!! I’m sending him a link to this very blog post to teach him how to do it. (Snort.)
Lol…no way I can’t believe there is someone else in this huge world that goes through the same kind of drama that I do just to get that one stupid room in the house clean lol…this is too funny. I have my bathroom in the master bdrm that I am responsible for and my other bathroom is in my hallway but really my son’s refers to it as his bathroom so he is responsible for cleaning it however, I do go through the same kind of drama with cleaning mine in that I too will start with the top of the counter wipe and clean that down then I move to the mirrors lol then I will head over to the tub but just the edge of it then I move ever so gradually ove to the toiled but then I just wipe down the back porcelain part where the lid is and then I move down to the side of the toiled and clean down where those little knob like thingies are on either side and then I will throw in ajax and walk away from it for awhile then psych myself up into coming back into the bathroom to finish up later lol tooo much drama for this momma why do we do this? I guess the idea must repulse me or something and I just avoid it like the plague. Oh this is sooo funny. Love the blog. Ooops I forgot the baseboards actually get cleaned and wiped down before the actual inside of the toilet get’s scrubbed…go figure.
Monica!!!! This is so funny!!!!!
I hope you washed your hands before entering your blog post.
‘Course I did!
(Well, I’m pretty sure I did. I don’t remember, actually.)
Of course you did.
it’s one of those ‘shut your eyes’ and ‘hold your nose’ and wrinkle up your face’ and hum a michael jackson tune jobs…and that’s just putting up the seat and unscrewing the bleach lid (which is always so difficult to do, that I end up calling hubby and feigning poor muscular formation, and he usually takes over in sheer frustration!) then I wander off downstairs with a smug smile on my dial still humming that mj song!
21. Think ahead 13 years while you are still using an honest-to-pete-crescent-moon-cutout-wood-doored outhouse for the coming time when you might actually have a real working toilet. Conceive a child. Teach her at a very young age how to properly clean the toilet. Be overzealous in your attention to detail so that she thinks it’s the way all toilets are to be cleaned. Anticipate the day when she might not want to clean the toilet and conceive a second child. Also anticipate the day when you might actually have a parent’s toilet and a children’s toilet in separate rooms. Figure out a way to make it logical sounding that she should clean both.
When all else fails, buy bleach wipes and do a “good enough” job to last until you REALLY clean it (which is usually at, like 1 in the morning with your final pee of the day and you notice the smell of which, oddly, you are certain you can NOT live with one single more day.)
We should write a house cleaning book together. 🙂
OMGosh, I know! When Christer was about 4 he wanted to help me clean the toilet. I let him. This happened ONCE. ONCE!
The next day, his preschool teacher said, “I KNOW what you guys make him do around the house!”
LOl no way!!!
My daughter solved the issue by having her kids learn how to clean the toilet. But then, they only clean the two they use; she still has to do the one in her bedroom and no, she can never call on her husband to do it as he doesn’t do any housework, childcare, trash or even much of the yardwork.
Get rid of the guy what good is he 🙂
SOOOOOO FUNNY- I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard!
Yes, Lorraine I too had to restrain myself or I would have had to go to the toilet lol!!! What a crack up…who started this???
LOL! I can relate!!
Friends call, they are on their way over.
Scramble to clean the toilet.
My daughter just got her own apartment this year at school and I worried all summer that I had never taught her to clean the toilet (she is 20). I guess she will have to figure it out – I’ll send her this, maybe it will help!
I DID have to clean the toilet growing up, every Saturday. (So obviously “training” doesn’t really help one bit. Your daughter will be “fine!”)
Okay seriously Carla, you are the funniest woman I know!!!! you CRACK me up!!!
How timely for my family. Yesterday, after a really long time (you don’t want to know how long) I have declared our two bathrooms DIRTY, and got all four members of the family to clean them at the same time. We were done in 15 minutes. That included: man, son (14), daughter (12) and yours truely. And the whole stopping what you’re doing to write a post….very familiar to me…
XOXOrly
Very funny post. Perfect.
Ha! Ha! Carla, this is pure gold! Of course, it could have been stolen from my own daily diary. I’m not sure I’m ready to confess just how awful it got before I scrubbed it down last week (yup, last week and I haven’t cleaned it since). But I might be ready to confess that there was a bit of an arm-wrestle between me and the germs for the cleaning brush.
Do you mean some people clean their toilets WEEKLY???!!!
you made my day.
How to laugh yourself silly:
A: Visit Carla’s site
B: Keep reading Carla’s post and ignore your own toilet bowl…:)
C: Continue ignoring toilets until tomorrow when you can come back and repeat A and B….
D: repeat Steps A – C.
E: hope for a new filthy rich husband who hires a maid and so that I can continue with Steps A – C.
Carry on….jolly good show what. 🙂
Love it! Where you spying on me??
EEEW! I’m with ya sister, but I’m OCD and HAVE to have a weekly clean bathroom! I’m not to proud to admit I solved the being repulsed to the point of convulsions by threats. CLEAN BATHROOMS OR I WILL NEVER DO ANY HOUSEWORK AGAIN! NO CLEAN LAUNDRY, NO FOOD, NO CLEAR PATHS TO GET FROM ROOM TO ROOM! The flushable toilet bowl scrubbers helped too. I couldn’t get past using that same disgusting brush over and over—felt I needed to sterilize it! I also threatened to keep buying new brushed every time I had to clean each of the 3 bathrooms… Fear of no food, no underwear, and no money from it all going to buy toilet bowl brushes gave me a willing sanitation engineer! (Before you feel too sorry for him…I still have to do the sinks and the tubs and mirrors, as he pretends to forget. But I don’t mind as long as the potty brigade remains strong! LOL!
Me too. Me too! ME TOO!! I even taught my elder son to do it. He won’t do it again, though.
Too funny, I can relate! I’d much rather be making art than cleaning any part of my house!
0. Buy a toilet brush.
b
http://www.itcrossedmymindblog.com
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LoL! We could be twins! I do a similar procrastination dance (or is it a warmup dance) with severak other tasks too. 😉
Well, I have 5 toilets in our house. I clean 3 of them and get through it by using Lysol Power Toilet Bowl Cleaner which actually smells ok – at least that’s what I tell myself to get the job done. If you squirt that stuff in first, then do the rest of the room, by the time you’re done, the toilet has almost cleaned itself! Just needs a little brush work and you’re done! Just be glad you don’t have 5!
Thanks for the tip, Susan!
Well I think it should be written into a marriage contract that the husband and any male offspring he produces are required to clean the toilets. After all, they’re pretty much the reason toilets have to be cleaned up fairly frequently anyway! 😉
It’s nice to know I’m not the only procrastinator when it comes to house cleaning (in particular toilet cleaning) =^)
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Oh that made me laugh. Exactly, and I mean exactly, how it happens in our house !! What is it about progressing from the bathroom mirror, to sink to toilet with the windolene/windex? Quick squirt of bleach and then – well good enough!! Also afterwards, always reward myself with a cup of tea for getting through it again! lol
;D
I know this is a tad bit late, but I think you forgot: Don biohazard toilet cleaning suit to protect yourself from any splashback. 😛
lol , awesome story, the comments as well.
mine best solution was, to train my hubby to sit down when he had to pee. At first he was in shock but when i told him that it was so much friendlier for women and cleaner to the walls and the ground , he slept over it, and decided why not.
i was soooo glad, it really helped.
Now john is gone for 7 years and all the visitors are standing….gr.
so i hate it again.LOL
i having the same probems with the cleaning again. and now it’s even worse because i’m now a wheelie.
so i tell everybody to go to their visitors toilet and not to use mine.LOL
Mine is adjust to mine hight so it’s to low for normal people.LOL
but … i don’t have light in that wc, i still must ask for help, but i ‘m still camping in this new house.LOL