Parenting Blog

Reluctantly Putting It All Away At The End of Summer

Clorox end of summer cleaning

It’s over.
The fat lady has sung.
The dust has most definitely settled.
The summer is over.

Summertime is a memory now, fading slowly in the dying sunlight.

School is on again and the associated paperwork is already taking over every flat surface of my home.

The furniture in the backyard is spared from the piles of parent forms in triplicate, student handbooks, and graded homework sheets, but the furniture out back on the patio is nagging me more incessantly than a school fundraiser. Really, already with the fundraising? Can I just cut you a nice check at the begging of the year and opt-out from the sugary popcorn/gift basket silent auction/low-rent chocolate bar/hideously designed t-shirt/scratchy socks fundraising campaigns from here on out?

“Clean us and put us in the shed!”, the heavy round table would say if the heavy round table could talk. But it can’t. It’s a heavy round table.

I don’t want to do it.

I hate doing it.

But, to quote Mr. Murphy in Dear Evan Hansen, “it’s the hard way, but it’s the right way”. Wait, that’s only partially true. It’s not hard at all, not with Clorox® Regular-Bleach. I simply don’t want to do it.

In a way I think I don’t want to scrub down the outdoor chairs, tables and the cooler, and then carry carefully (read: drag haphazardly) everything about 50 paces to our shed because that will be an admittance that the season for outdoor fun and entertaining is over, caput, fin. It’s also because I’d much rather stay in the house, on the new sofa we just bought, warm beneath my favorite soft blanket, and watching Premier League football on these crisp autumn weekend mornings.

I don’t plan on raking either. That’s the worst. See above.

With Clorox, it’s super easy to scrub down my outdoor patio furniture, which I’ll do because it is the right way and also because it’s one of the tasks I signed up for (stupid fine print!) when I became a responsible homeowner. Here’s my plan:

Use Clorox® Regular-Bleach2 on the hard non porous surfaces of my outdoor furniture to remove any mold and mildew and wipe away the harsh effects of a summer season spent outside in the elements and under the sun:

  • Disinfect all cleaned surfaces with a solution of 3/4 cup of Clorox® Regular-Bleach2 diluted in 1 gallon of water.
  • Let the solution stay on the surface for at least 10 minutes before rinsing with clear water or allowing to dry.
  • Routinely check potential problem spots for moldy odors, and disinfect often with a solution of 1/2 cup of Clorox® Regular-Bleach2 diluted in 1 gallon of water.
  • Here’s a helpful video for the visual learners: How to Clean Mold & Mildew

If only there was a Clorox product that made raking that easy or, maybe, made the leaves just, I dunno, clean themselves up all tidy-like.

In the meantime, if you need me, I’ll get that outdoor furniture and cooler scrubbed and stashed, reluctantly, then I’ll be in my home, on my sofa, beneath my blanket, watching English football for the rest of this new season.

OWTK is a brand ambassador for Clorox and has been compensated for this post.

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