But I'm not incapable of learning! After her second visit back home, She returned the third weekend to find a spotless kitchen, with counter tops so clean that a mobile army surgical unit would be proud to perform emergency triage on them. I received appropriate accolades. I was shown the light.
As a man, however, I am determined to make housecleaning as masculine, indeed as minimal, as possible. This is not always commensurate with, say, avoiding staphylococcus infestations or viewing the garden through the lounge windows, but there are answers. There have to be answers.
With this blog, then, I'm going to review those technologies, potions and other products that help me get where I want to be in the manliest way possible. I want to be a good partner, too, so getting these things done should help the domestic situation all around: we'll be healthy, she'll be happy, and ever shall the twain meet.
With that introduction the, I offer my first product review:
Mr. Muscle Toilet Power Discs
Like wifi for the loo
I was watching television late one night and saw an ad for this product, or a very similar one; having now shopped for them I now see that there are several brands available. Of course, I chose this one: Mr. Muscle just screams Paleo Housekeeping. Think of all they could have called this stuff, but they went with POWER DISCS. I rest my case.
But there are greater challenges around the house, but bathrooms top the list of most annoying/wish I didn't have to do it. Honestly, She does them all the time because we KNOW I can't get them as clean as she would like them to be (I suspect I might be able to but she would have to supervise the process, and we know how that would go). Over the course of my lifetime, I can't honestly recall being involved the process all that much, but left alone at this point in time, I have been forced to admit that having a commode that looks like it came out of Mike's Service Station, halfway between Phoenix and Flagstaff on the I-17 is probably not civilised. Yet, the thought of getting in there and mucking around by hand is both too much work and just, I dunno, Freudian nightmarish that I cry out in my sleep for something that keeps the whole business looking civilised with as little attention as possible.
The ad for Power Discs seemed surreal in a way: there was no clear demonstration of what the discs were, or how they worked. But a pair of disembodied hands sort of shot a disc on to the inside of the toilet bowl--I think the ad actually uses the verb 'to shoot' to describe the process--and BOOM, it was clean. And it lasts for 2 months. This seemed to good to be true, but having noted the condition of our loos the next morning, I put it on the shopping list.
In fact, Power Discs are not discs at all. Inside the box are two halves of the apparatus: a blue sleeve with some holes running down one side, and a white cylinder with a cap on one end and a label. If any item was ever created for male usage, this is it: a mechanical device containing an unknown material, with toxic warnings on it, and not a single instruction of how to put it together to be found. Anywhere. I mean, we wouldn't read instructions if provided, but the thoughtfulness of not having included them at all really impressed me.
The two pieces fit together coaxially, as you quickly surmise. there are two little tabs on the cylinder, one to align the thing with the blue sleeve, the other a button that you feed into the cylinder until it pops up in the first whole. Operation is thus self-explanatory: You remove the blue cap on the flared end of the cylinder, depress the button in the first hole of the sleeve, freeing it to move to the second hole, and push the flared end of the cylinder against the side of your toilet. On full compression, the button moves to the next hole, thus measuring out a single application of the material. This was the confusing part from the TV depiction: if they're discs, why is all of this applicator stuff required?
But surprise! It's not a disc, it's this strange plasma gel stuff that holds a shape like a flower or a fractal design once it is extruded onto the john wall. This design, I might add, seems to be a weak spot in the product: the label on the cylinder warns that the little flowers 'may be attractive to young children'. I would hope any children of mine would be smart enough to not go grazing in the commode, but there you go. Next up. lockable toilet seats.
I like the whole plasma shooter idea here. You get to use a simple 'gun' of sorts, it shoots exotic translucent material that in a way reminds me of the some sort of alien ammunition from 'Independence Day' or some other ET flick. And what does it do? It does it does well it
DOES GENIUS.
In less than 24 hours the toilets were all veritable gardens of delight. A couple of preliminary flushes, a tiny bit of brush work on that persistent leftover from curry night two weeks ago, and BAM, no fuss no muss. How does it do it? I don't know, honestly. It's like wifi for the toilet, just kind of magical. The box says it has bleach in it, but I can tell you I've been putting bleach in the can for years and it has never done the work that the Power Discs are doing in my home as we speak. The other ingredients all have names I can't pronounce and are liberally punctuated with numbers, sort of like U-235 and Strontium 18. Of course I don't have to tell you that only the most potent and masculine of chemicals, the kind from which you construct thermonuclear devices, contain chemical compounds with numbers. And 8 weeks of freedom from the whole business until it's time to bust a cap in that worst of bathroom chores again. I'm in, all in.
Don't walk, run to buy this stuff.
PALEO HK SCORE:
THE PALEO HK SCORING: unlike other evaluative processes which try to offer a comparative scale of success, here at Paleo HK we only care about two things. First, does it do what I want it to do? And second, does it do it at an acceptably low level of effort? These are binary questions. It either does or it doesn't. I don't care if it does it better than something else, just if it handles my needs. My needs are what count. I'm Paleo. So two clubs is a max score. One club is a compromise, no clubs is defined as 'not my job'.
