Dirty dog, clean house
Keeping your home smelling and looking clean with your new dog
When you’ve walked into the homes of 84 different dogs — and that’s not including cancellations for a handful of irate pets that just wouldn’t let me put the leash on — you see a lot of different setups. Sometimes I walk into people’s homes, and it just looks like they own a dog. You can smell or see the fur on a pet owner’s clothes (especially cats).
There are baby gates everywhere, fur all over the furniture, blankets torn to shreds, that wet dog smell is apparent, and toys and leftover food are all over the place. Then I walk into other people’s homes, and I can smell the incense, candles and cleaner before I put the key in the lock. It looks like a magazine spread. Considering how adamant I am about Sweeper Sundays and cleanliness in general, here’s hoping I stay in the “magazine spread” crew.
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For as long as I’ve had my own place (since junior year of college with a one-bedroom apartment for $225), I’ve been adamant about sweeping, mopping, dusting and (re)organizing every single Sunday for the past 20 years. I have yet to miss a Sunday. When I started dog boarding two years ago, I was even more adamant about it, covering my beige and chocolate brown couches with blankets to make sure no fur collected on them.
Recommended Read: “Helping pet owners maintain a clean couch ~ Sweeper Sundays, rainy days and other home improvement tips for pets”
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Then I got my own dog. Nowadays, I just cannot fathom the idea of keeping blankets permanently on my couches. I want the dog to be comfortable, but I also want a neat home. I pay the mortgage. She doesn’t. But every time she gets a case of the Zoomies on my laminate floors or chases her tail and knocks a couch pillow across the room, I wince, wondering just how much she’s going to challenge my relentless tidiness. When I was boarding adult dogs for a couple of weeks, I didn’t care. Adult dogs are calmer and housetrained. Puppies are a ball of energy. When you’re in a home 24/7 with puppy Zoomies, you start wondering, “How do I balance this out?”