When I was a carpet cleaner, there was nothing I hated more than working in the rain. I distinctly remember hauling my portable carpet cleaner up three flights of stairs on a 108º day in 2015, and I don’t feel an ounce of hostility about it, but I still bristle every time I think about any of the many, many jobs I had to do in the pouring rain because the client refused to reschedule.

Clients would call when the weather was sunny and warm – perfect for cleaning carpet – to schedule an appointment for the following week when it was going to be raining. I would point out that it was going to rain the day they wanted me to clean their carpet, and sometimes they would choose another day, but very often, that was the only day they could possibly have their carpet cleaned.

When I called a client to confirm an appointment the day before, and rain was forecasted for the next day, I tried to get them to reschedule, but most of the time, they refused. So, I cleaned a lot of carpet in the pouring rain. Then, during the weeks when it was raining, my phone wouldn’t ring. Carpet cleaning wasn’t even on their minds because it was raining. Huh?

The Man Didn’t Care If I Cleaned Carpet In the Rain

When I worked for Chem-Dry, they sure as fuck didn’t care if we worked in the rain. They weren’t canceling jobs for any reason. The owner, Bill, hired a guy because he had ten years of experience as a carpet installer. He thought he could add carpet sales and installation to his list of services and make the new guy, Kanan, install it. Kanan, of course, wanted to be a carpet cleaner because it seemed easier than installing carpet, and his body hurt from the years of abuse from installing flooring.

One winter day in 2006, Bill scheduled a carpet installation and told the customer that we could install the carpet even if it was raining. He told Kanan that he could roll the carpet out in the garage to make his cuts. Kanan got to the job only to find that the garage was filled with shit, so there was no room to unroll the carpet. He called Bill and told him they would have to reschedule, but Bill wasn’t having it. He wanted Kanan to finish the job that day. Kanan asked how Bill expected him to install the carpet in the rain when there was nowhere to lay out the carpet. Bill replied, “Well, how did you do it when you were a carpet installer?”

Kanan yelled into the phone, “We didn’t install carpet in the fucking rain!”

I was so giddy when he told me that later that day. Bill was a fucking moron, and getting stiff and yelling at him was the only thing he responded to.

Be Your Own Boss, They Said…

So, when I started my own business and had the latitude to make my own schedule, I began checking the weather every day. If a customer wanted me to come clean their carpet on a day that rain was forecast, I would inform them that it was supposed to rain that day. Most people had their heads screwed on right and realized the stupidity of cleaning carpets in the rain, but there were some who either didn’t care or, didn’t have a choice.

I could never understand it. Why would you want your carpet cleaned in the rain? In 2019, I showed up at a client’s house to clean her carpet in the pouring rain. I tried to get her to reschedule by informing her that the carpet was going to take a very long time to dry, but she just looked at me like I was a fucking idiot. I went out to my van and recorded a video about my thoughts on cleaning carpet in the rain. You can hear the rain falling on the roof of the van.

2017: The Winter Of Carpet Cleaning In the Rain

2017 seemed to be the worst year for carpet cleaning in the rain. It was an unusually wet winter despite not being an El Niño year. I had more customers keep their appointments despite the rain than I ever had before. One woman even had me clean her patio furniture in the pouring rain. Her fucking patio furniture! Why does your patio furniture need to be cleaned in the pouring rain? That was the closest I ever came to telling a customer to go fuck themselves and storm off the job. I went out to my van and furiously wrote this diatribe:

If I’ve done anything that sucked more ass than cleaning someone’s patio furniture in the rain I honestly can’t remember it. Seriously people, your priorities are all out of whack! Will your 16 year olds birthday really be ruined if you have dirty patio furniture? You need to find Jesus. Not that ridiculous Jesus that says that you need to buy your pastor a Bentley or the Jesus that says that the gay community is the root of all of your problems but the Jesus that was talking about the rich man and the camel and the needle. Did you ever see the video where the garbage man rips the mail box out of the ground and throws in in the garbage truck? I feel you brother. 

Pissed Off And Soaking Wet

That still paled in comparison to a job I would do just a few weeks later. It was on Friday, February 17, 2017. I had just one job on the books that day and an easy one at that. It was a vacant office in a single-story building. Ordinarily, I would love to close out the week with a job like this, but not on this day. On this day, it rained harder than I had seen it rain in years. I tried to cancel the job, but the property manager wouldn’t budge. I begged, pleaded, reasoned, bitched, whined, and complained, but the new tenant was moving in the next day, so the carpet had to be cleaned right then.

It wasn’t just that it was pouring rain outside from the moment I arrived at the job until I left. It wasn’t because it took me twenty minutes on each job to get set up to clean – that’s twenty minutes of walking to and from the van. Twenty minutes in any amount of rain is enough to completely soak you down to your underwear. It was because, on top of everything else, my extractor broke down on the job, so I had to spend time trying to get the machine started again in the rain.

I’m Only Human

I blamed the property manager. Her stubborn unwillingness to reschedule this fucking job made it take three times longer than necessary. When I finished, she had the gall to ask me when the carpet would be dry. “Never!” I snapped. “It’s pouring rain outside, humidity is 100%. This carpet is never going to dry.” 

The rain stopped shortly after I finished the job. That is the one thing I can count on when doing a job in the rain. It will only rain while I’m working. When I got home, I took a long hot shower, contemplating my poor life choices. Then, I wrapped myself up in a blanket on the sofa, intent on not leaving the house again until Monday. 

I’m Finally Dry

My overarching goal ever since that day has been not to leave the house when it’s raining. I’m so grateful to be in a place in my life where I don’t have to leave the house on rainy days like today. I know I sound like a whiny little bitch who’s afraid to get wet, but that’s not what this is about. Just last winter, I spent the afternoon walking in the rain and photographing the rising arroyo because I wanted to. What I’m talking about is choices.

I’ve never had a job where I had a choice about whether I was going to work in the rain or not. I’ve never even had a job where I had the option to call in sick. And even when I started my own business, and I didn’t have any fuckwit asshole telling me what to do, I still had to go to work in the rain. Now, I can stay inside on a rainy day like I always wished I could when I was soaked through to my underwear, cursing my clients, and wishing I had chosen some other path in my life, and it’s everything I always thought it could be.

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Too Many Showers

In the fourth episode of the third season Barney and Ted make a bet to see which one of them can fuck a chick they picked out at the bar. Barney tries to psych Ted out by telling him I’m that he fucked her a year earlier and asking him if 200 showers was enough to clean him off of her. I’m sorry, what? 200 showers? In a whole ass year? That’s only one shower every other day! I shower twice, every fucking day!

Now, I understand that showering twice a day is above average, but is only showering a few times a week, normal? God I hope not, but that would explain why everyone in line at the grocery store smells like a sweaty ballsack. Is that why everyone is wearing perfume?

Too Much Electricity

I get a recurring mindfuck about once a quarter when the electric company sends me a letter telling me what an electricity hog I am. It shows a graph of how much more energy I consume than my neighbors. It stumps me every time I see it because I know I can’t be in the upper percentiles of energy usage in my neighborhood.

Our neighbors across the street would run their air conditioner all summer long with their living room slider open. They would leave every light on in their house, even when they weren’t home – even when they were on vacation! I’ve heard my next-door neighbor’s air conditioner kick on when it was 61º outside. I even heard another neighbor’s A/C running when it was 57º outside. Open a fucking window!

There’s no way I’m using more electricity than these people because I don’t even have air conditioning, and I haven’t turned on the heater in 9 years because it’s broken. Most of the bulbs in my house are LED, we don’t have a pool, and the stove and water heater are both gas. So, how can I be using more energy than my neighbors who all keep their houses cold enough to store meat all summer long?

I know I’m not because I’ve talked to other people about their electricity bills, and I know what they’re paying. Some people are paying four figures to cool their houses in the summertime. I’ve never had a bill over $250 at any time during the year. When solar salesmen hear that they pretend like that’s outrageous and that I shouldn’t be paying more than $60 per month. Is it me or the propaganda?

Too Many Dishes

So, it’s bad enough to find out I’m wasting so much electricity, but then I come to find out that I’m also washing too many dishes. Our dishwasher broke after just 18 months, so we called a repair man out to take a look at it. He asked us how often we run it. We told him one to three times a day. We were flabbergasted when he told us that dishwashers weren’t meant to be used like that. “They are only meant to be run once every two or three days.”

The fuck you say?!

“Even run once every two or three days, they only last five years.”

“So, what you’re saying is that we got our five years out of this machine in just 18 months.”

“Basically.”

“”

I can’t believe that a normal family of 4 doesn’t run their dishwasher at least once a day. Are people really out there only washing dishes once or twice a week? Do they never cook? When either one of my kids cooks, they use every fucking dish in the house, and we have a lot of dishes. Is everyone just using paper plates and plastic forks? Do they eat every meal out? Is it me or the propaganda?

Too Many Loads

So, this afternoon, I ran out of laundry detergent and had to run to the store to buy more. Before I left, I studied the label of the old jug of detergent so I could be sure to get the same one. That’s when I noticed the propaganda on the label that claimed that this jug of detergent could last 5 months. Whether that’s true, I don’t know and I don’t care, it’s all relative. What caught my eye was that the 5 months were based on doing 10 loads of laundry per month. Who is only doing 10 loads per month?

I wash Bonnie’s and my clothes. I wash a minimum of five loads every single week. That’s our bedding, a load of whites, a load of blacks, a load of warm colors, and a load of cool colors. Bonnie always busts my balls about that, but it came about for a very pragmatic reason. We have too much laundry to do a load of lights and a load of darks. So, I had to separate them into four loads to not overload the machine. Separating the colors by cools and warms is just an aesthetic preference, and I find it very pleasing.

Anyway, that’s five loads every week, minimum. Sometimes, there’s more, and that doesn’t even include my kid’s laundry or Bonnie’s mom’s. I’m already up to 7 loads today, and I still have one more to go. We’re looking at between 30 and 40 loads every month. Do other people have more clothing than we do, and therefore can go longer between washes? I actually bought 30 T-shirts, so that I wouldn’t have to wash them so frequently, in the hope that they would last longer. I tried to wash them only once per month, but they stink up the room if they’re left that long.

Are these 10 loads per month people the same people who only shower a couple of times per week? Do they wash clothes on shower days? What is going on in this world, and how did I get so out of step with everyone else? Is it me or the propaganda?

The post Is It Me Or The Propaganda? appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

I was in U-Haul today, renting a trailer, when a man walked in and asked the employee for an adapter to connect two hoses. The employee told him that they don’t sell that sort of thing because they’re a rental shop. The man looked around and then explained that someone at Harbor Freight said they didn’t have anything like that. “It’s for a water pump,” he said as if explaining what he needed the adapter for would jog something loose in the employee’s brain, and he would be suddenly able to produce it. The employee explained again that they were a rental shop and they didn’t sell stuff like that. The man turned around and began to peruse the merchandise as though he didn’t believe the clerk.

It annoyed me that the employee didn’t say, “This isn’t a hardware store.” That’s what I would have said. The world would function so much more effectively if everyone were direct and specific.

I Got Out Of The House Today!

I rented a trailer today to help Bonnie move some shit for work. We had to pick up a Hoyer Lift that her company found on the Nextdoor app. A Hoyer Lift, if you don’t know, is a sort of crane for lifting and moving people around. It looks like a sex swing but a very industrial-looking one designed by the Soviets.

It’s Not The Size That Counts

Once she got me into her office, she put me to work. JCAHO is coming soon, the file room had no lock on the door, so I changed the knob to a locking one. I wasn’t sure what I would need to change the lock, so I packed a basic toolbox. This was a pretrial for when I get rid of my rollaway. I might be able to get away with a much smaller toolbox than I previously thought. I don’t quite have the words to describe my excitement about that. I’ll get back to you on that one.

The star of the show was a 27-piece screwdriver set that I picked up at an estate sale many years ago. I’ve kept it around because I thought it was cool, but I’ve never used it until today because I wasn’t sure if it was any good. I’m sold! It’s 10 nut drivers, 10 Allen drivers, 2 Phillips, and 2 flat-head screwdrivers, a normal-sized handle, a shorty, and a T-bar. It’s got my bases covered for most jobs, and it takes up a fraction of the space that a set of 22 drivers would. It did exactly what I needed it to do today, so it stays.

I didn’t have everything I needed, though. I could have used a chisel or a jigsaw because the new doorknob didn’t quite fit into the existing hole. Fortunately, I always have my pocket knife on me, so I was able to carve just enough wood out of the way to get the knob in the hole.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Pickup

Next, I loaded two file cabinets into the trailer. You can talk all the shit you want about Tesla, but this is the best damn car I’ve ever driven. I ordered it with a tow hitch so I could put a bike rack on it. The fact that it can tow a trailer is just icing on the cake. It also ties into my current mindset of letting go and not keeping shit around “just in case.” I don’t need to own a pickup truck just in case I need to move something. I can rent a trailer. Being reminded of that will help me tremendously in the process of cleaning out my garage.

I Can’t Be Left Unsupervised

Bonnie and her coworker left me to get a client’s signature on some documents, so I hung out at the office by myself until they got back. I immediately began to regret not having any videos planned for an office setting. I could have taken advantage of this set. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I racked my brain. I came up with an idea for a photo of a heated board meeting.

What Happened To Service?

When the ladies returned, we all left. Bonnie and I grabbed a bite to eat before we headed back home. Lots of things have changed since COVID, but I’ve realized lately that one of the major ones for me is that I no longer have patience for eating out. I can’t stand waiting around for someone to come take my drink order and then bring my drink. Then, I have to wait for them to come back and take my order, then wait for the food, and god forbid I might need anything after they bring my food. I’ll never see them again.

The worst, though, is waiting for the check. Why does it take so fucking long? I don’t remember it taking so long before COVID. Now, every time I go out to eat, it seems like I have to wait at least as long as I took to eat for them to bring the check, not to mention the time it takes for them to come back to get it.

So, I spent my Saturday working, but it was nice to get out of the house and focus on something other than my own neurosis. I got to test run my streamlined tool collection, I got a free meal, and I got to spend the day with my wife. All in all, I would have to say it was a, well, umm, actually pretty nice little Saturday.

The post It Was Actually A Pretty Nice Little Saturday appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

It’s An Illness

I had to make a lot of decisions today. Some of them were tough, like whether I should get rid of my router. I hate routers. They’re noisy, and I hate the way they fling sawdust all over me. I want to make a bunch of dovetailed drawers, though, so should I keep it?

Other decisions were very easy. There was a shocking amount of shit stashed away in my garage, and I don’t know what a lot of it is or what it’s for. I guess my logic was that when the time came that I needed it, I would spontaneously know what it was for. That’s insane!

Hoarding is definitely an illness. The whole time I was out there cleaning, I was thinking about what I might need every little nut, bolt, and tool for in the future. It’s been 46 years already, and I haven’t needed any of it so far, but its time is coming! I started to stress about getting rid of something only to need it later. Like, I have an 18″ long 3/4″ drive breaker bar out there and exactly one socket for it. It’s 1 5/16″. When the hell am I ever going to need to break loose a 1 5/16″ bolt? And, in the highly unlikely scenario that I do, I also have a 24″ 1/2″ drive breaker bar with a 1/2″ to 3/4″ adapter. So, I’m covered.

What Now?

So, now there’s more room in my drawers, but instead of being discreetly stashed away out of sight, the detritus of my garage is piled in the middle of my work table. What do I do with it now? Throw it in the trash? Drag it out to the curb? Sell it? Where? eBay? Craigslist? Facebook? Garage Sale? It’s all so time-consuming, and in the meantime, I have to find a new place to store it all.

The whole point of going through everything and culling the excess was to make room in the garage, but now there is less room, and I have to spend more time dealing with all of this shit. I suppose I should be grateful that this is currently my biggest problem. Folks in Pacific Palisades have real problems right now. Of course, if I lived there, this problem might have been solved for me last night.

The post And It Begins appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

I made a video several years ago about cleaning grease and tobacco off a kitchen ceiling. The video demonstrated my process of cleaning a kitchen ceiling. It was not a tutorial about how to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling. But little did I know that the only thing that viewers of that video wanted to know was what cleaner I used in the video. I made no mention in the video of the cleaner I used partly because it is a commercial cleaning product that I knew the average consumer wouldn’t have access to. So why bother mentioning it?

Well, that video just infuriated people, and they left hateful comments because they wanted to know what I used. So I made a new video about how to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling and in this video, I explained exactly what I used. And do you know what happened? People started complaining that they couldn’t find anywhere to buy the cleaner I used. Exactly what I knew would happen but my conscience is clear because I gave the people exactly what they wanted.

Of course, there’s more than one way to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling. And even though I offered suggestions in that second video of other products to use people still want to use the one they can’t have because, well, it’s the best. And so here in this post, I will explain exactly what I use to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling and other products that you can use as well as why they work. I will also walk you through my process that will clean grease as well as tobacco and anyother grime from a kitchen ceiling.

So What Should I Use?

• Simple Green
• Formula 409
• that Purple Degreaser they sell at the big orange store
• anything that says “degreaser” on the label

All of these and more will work to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling. Some will work more quickly than others but they all will eventually soak into the grease and allow you to wipe it off. Patience is the most important qualification in a good cleaner. Of course, we know you don’t have any of that because once you saw that list of chemicals you clicked right off and never even made it to this sentence. And that’s your misfortune because I left out the single best product I have ever come across to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling. But I’ll get to that later.

Let The Chemical Do The Work

Chemicals?! But I don’t want to use chemicals in my home! I have children and pets and a zero carbon footprint and I only use safe, non-toxic, environmentally friendly cleaning products in my home. That’s all well and good and I sincerely encourage you to continue in that practice. But I will say two things about green cleaners.

The first thing I have to say is that manufacturers of “green” cleaning products are responsible to NOBODY when it comes to labeling their products with words like “natural” and “non-toxic”. There is no regulation regarding “green” cleaners. A manufacturer can put just about whatever they want in a bottle and call it whatever they want. So you shouldn’t feel as comfortable with your “green” cleaners as you do.

But You Still Don’t Want To Use Chemicals To Clean Grease Off Your Kitchen Ceiling

I understand. And so the second thing I have to say about green cleaners is that while legitimately green cleaning products have their place they are not suitable for every job. Most of that sticky mess up there is oil from cooking things in your kitchen. Most of the “green” cleaners you have under your sink are for routine, general maintenance sort of cleaning. They can’t cut through the years of accumulation of thick, oil-based muck. You need something that the grease will absorb; something that will get inside like a Trojan Horse to emulsify the grease from the inside out allowing you to easily rinse it away.

One of the fundamentals of cleaning is that “Like cleans like” meaning that if you have a water-based mess to clean up you need to use a water-based cleaner. Likewise, if you are trying to clean up an oil-based mess like, oh, I don’t know, a greasy kitchen ceiling you need an oil-based cleaner.

Most degreasers (like the aforementioned) are made with solvents called glycol ethers. D-limonene is another common solvent. It’s the active ingredient in “green” degreasers. Since it comes from oranges it sounds very safe and non-toxic but it’s not as safe and non-toxic as it sounds. Products with either of those ingredients will work very well to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling.

The way I see it is this: the grime on your kitchen ceiling probably isn’t any more safe and non-toxic than the cleaners needed to clean it. So you might as well just peel the band-aid and use a product that will get the job done as quickly as possible.

And besides, if you wear PPE and use these chemicals the way they were intended they are perfectly safe.

But Then There’s Always My Way…

Of course, if you want to get really aggressive with the grease you could use the best product I have ever come across to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling: Husky 901 Industrial Cleaner/Degreaser. It’s a glycol ether degreaser with an extra, special ingredient that sets it apart from any other glycol ether degreaser. It’s chock full of potassium hydroxide and that turns an ordinary degreaser into a highly alkaline grease destroying machine. The high alkalinity makes quick work of dissolving grease. Through a process called saponification, it actually turns the grease into soap which further aids in the cleaning! How cool is that!

You’ll be hard-pressed to find any place to buy Husky 901 though. It’s a commercial cleaning product and it’s only available from commercial, janitorial distributors. I only mention it because everyone always wants to know what I use to clean greasy kitchen ceilings. It’s not my fault it’s not available to the general public.

But like I said, home stores, grocery stores, and any other store where you buy your cleaning products will sell a degreaser that will work to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling. And now that I’ve told you what to use I’ll tell you how to use it.

That’s How To Clean Grease Off Your Kitchen Ceiling

That’s all there is to it. Now you know how to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling. If you are prepping to paint, repeat the process using Tri-Sodium Phosphate instead of a degreaser. TSP will degloss the paint allowing fresh paint to stick to it. Otherwise, your ceiling should be clean and ready to start building a fresh new layer of grease.

Check out this video I made about how to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling.

The post How To Clean Grease Off Your Kitchen Ceiling appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

In this post, we will teach you how to clean vinyl furniture the way the professionals do. It’s really easy and fast and it hardly costs anything at all. With this process, you can keep your vinyl furniture looking great and make it last forever.

Don’t sit on the piece for a few hours. Residual cleaner left on the vinyl will stain your clothes.

That’s all there is to it. Now you know how to clean vinyl furniture. It’s fast and easy. You can clean your vinyl furniture with this process as often as necessary and your furniture will stay looking new for a lifetime. You can even teach your kids how to clean vinyl furniture and then make it a part of their routine chores. Check out the video below to see this process in action.

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