I read a quote in the Wall Street Journal last week that rocked my world. And it wasn’t about the size of the national deficit.

It was concerning a subject much closer to home: laundry. Here’s what the cofounder of Seventh Generation which manufactures environmentally safe household products had to say about laundry detergent, “You don’t even need soap to wash most loads” because the agitation of the washing machine is generally enough to get most clothes clean.

No detergent? That’s a pretty radical statement. Saying that you don’t need detergent to do the wash is like saying you don’t need sugar to make cookies. It brings everything I know about being a mom into question. Isn’t finding a detergent that will get our whites whiter, removes stains better, and keep colors brighter the holy grail for this most basic of household chores?

As I thought more about the idea of doing wash without soap, I had to agree that it probably works. Images from National Geographic specials of women standing knee-deep water slapping their clothes on rocks comes to mind. They seem to get their clothes clean and soft yet there isn’t a bottle of “Tide with a Touch of Downey Liquid Laundry Detergent” anywhere in sight.

But you won’t find me on the bank of the Petaluma River. I believe I speak for most women when I say that I’m not ready to go back-to-nature when it comes to doing the wash. I’m firmly committed to using detergent and a washing machine.

However, the article had some really good advice about doing laundry that I would like to pass on. It turns out that when using today’s concentrated detergents, more isn’t better.

Every time I measure out the detergent, I look at the small amount in the measuring cup and think to myself that that amount can’t possibly be enough to get the load really clean. So I always top it off just to be sure.

However, according to a consumer scientist for Whirlpool, “you have to be much more precise in dosing detergent” because the result of adding too much Tide, Gain or Kirkland is that instead of getting our clothes cleaner, it actually makes them dingier and makes the machine wear out faster.

Then why don’t they make the little lines on the measuring cups easier to read? I’ve read the instructions on the package numerous times and I’m still not sure which line to fill the cup for large loads and which line is for heavily soiled loads. This isn’t supposed to be rocket science.

Help is on the way. Procter & Gamble is changing the cups so they are easier-to-read. The new ones will have more defined measurement lines and bigger numbers that are staggered, not stacked.

 Amazing…a company is actually encouraging us to use less of their product.

I naively thought that putting “free” in the Craig’s List posting for our old loveseat would generate some inquiries. When that didn’t happen, I thought writing a blog about our difficulty in getting rid of it might reach a different audience and turn up someone who was in the market for a pre-owned, pre-snagged loveseat.

There are, after all, advantages to acquiring a piece of furniture that has already been broken in by kids and pets; anything that could happen to a sofa already has happened, so everybody can just have a seat and relax. Feet on the couch, who cares!

But alas, no takers.  In the meantime, our loveseat sat warm and cozy in the garage while our daughter’s car shivered in the driveway.

The only option left was to call up a local charity and schedule a pick-up. I had been resisting doing this for fear of rejection; whether or not they will take an item is at the driver’s discretion and a few years ago we had a close call when the Salvation Army almost refused to haul away a sofa that I considered to be in pretty good condition. I was a little shaken to find out that the Salvation Army has higher standards in home décor than I do.

So rather than risk having the same picky driver inspect our loveseat, I instead called the local Catholic charity to schedule a pick up – at least that’s what I hoped it would be. While I was on the phone giving our contact info to a very nice gal, I tried to get a sense of how particular they are about the condition of items they will accept.

“So if you can see the pattern of the fabric through the cat hair, that’s ok, right? Steve was across the desk gesturing wildly at me, certain that the mere mention of cats would be enough to doom any possibility of them taking it.

Steve was the one who was going to be home on the day they were scheduled to come. Throughout the day I kept checking in with him. “Have they come, did they take it?”

When I pulled into the driveway late that afternoon, the garage door was open and…yippee!…where the loveseat had been was now empty space waiting for my daughter to pull her car in.

Of course, I wanted to know right away from Steve how the transaction had gone. Did he have to bribe them to take it? No, a payoff wasn’t involved but it was Steve’s quick thinking that saved us from having to chop up the loveseat for firewood.

Steve said the driver gave it a thorough once over and said with a half-smile, “The problem is it has a lot of dog hair.” Even though I had used the “Warning: Sucks up small children and animals” pet hair attachment on my new vacuum.

“Wait a minute,” said Steve and he shot upstairs to retrieve the Pledge Fabric Sweeper I had bought at Target a few days earlier. The driver immediately recognized it as the product he had seen TV ads for. In a few strokes, Steve had swept off about a pound of assorted pet hair. “Wow, does it work on cat fur, too?” Which of course Steve’s demonstration showed that it does. “I gotta get one of those.”

So everyone was happy. With the loveseat thoroughly de-thatched, the charity was willing to take it, we had our garage space back, and Pledge has sold another sweeper.

One of the goals we had for this summer was to get Valerie a new desk for her room. To the best of my recollection, we bought the desk she has been using when she was about six-years-old. It’s kind of a wood version of a Little Tikes table. The desk’s small size and matching mini-chair make it very cute to look at but don’t measure up now that she is a high school junior. I sat down at it recently and instantly felt like I was in first grade again.

So where to buy a desk for a ten-foot-by-eleven-foot bedroom that gives my daughter enough space for homework, artwork, and a computer, but isn’t so big that it has to double as a bed? And as she put it, “it also can’t be ugly or expensive.”

After typing in “small glass-top desk” in Google, and scrolling through pages of office furniture, we ended up on the Ikea website. There we found a simple rectangular glass top table with silver legs that was a snug fit for the room but met our other criteria. Yippee! Whip out the credit card and we’re done! Except that we quickly discovered that shipping was going to cost as much as the desk itself.

“Well no problem,” I said to Valerie. “There’s an Ikea store about 45 minutes away from us. I’ve driven past dozens of times but I’ve never been in. And even better, we’ll be driving right past it on the way home from our day of foraging at Nordstrom Rack. Swedish meatballs here we come!”

So on Friday, after our day of shopping in the South Bay, we headed north, inched our way through Raider fans on their way to McAfee Coliseum in Oakland, and got to Ikea well after 7pm. The blue and yellow fortress that is the Ikea store looks big from the freeway, but I was not prepared for the enormity of it close up. We kept joking that it must have its own zip code. Thankfully, “Entrance” was identified in letters about the size of a bus so even novice Ikea shoppers like us could find our way in.

Once we got inside, it was obvious a map was essential if we were ever going to track down the Vika Larssven Ingefisk Table (ok, I’m exaggerating, it’s just that all the items in Ikea have faux Swedish names) we had seen online. We grabbed a map and on the back of it was little schematic drawing of their shopping process – kind of like the assembly instructions that come with Happy Meal toys that are supposed to be able to be understood by three-year-olds who can’t read yet but actually they have been simplified so much that they don’t make sense.

The girls and I agreed that we should forget figuring out the map and hope that we could find someone to ask once we start shopping. From the entrance where we were standing, the only way that didn’t lead to a dead end was up the escalator. That took us to the “Showroom” level where there were arrows painted on the concrete path. It wasn’t exactly the Yellow Brick Road but we were pretty sure that we were supposed to follow it.

That’s when I realized that Ikea is the Swedish word for maze. And how thoughtful; they know that we’re not as smart as rats and so they gave us arrows to help us find our way through it. And if we never find your way out? That’s why there’s a restaurant there. We’ll be able to survive on smorbrot and lingonberry jam.

So how do you shop at Ikea? It took the agile brain power of my youngest daughter, Jennifer, to figure it out. The fundamental Ikea concept that I didn’t get is that the entrance is truly only an entrance. Once inside, you follow the arrows until you get spit out in the warehouse and checkout area. It is designed so you don’t see the full scope of the place unless you follow the complete path.

In retrospect, it doesn’t sound like it should have been that hard to figure out. However, just like I wouldn’t recommend a first-time visitor to Disneyland arrive there an hour before closing and try to find their way to the Indiana Jones ride, a newbie Ikea shopper like me probably shouldn’t have attempted an excursion there without an experienced guide – especially after an already action-packed day of shopping at Nordstrom Rack.

Did we actually get the desk that we went to Ikea for in the first place? We did indeed find it, and got a nice Ikea employee to load it on a flatbed cart. We were on our way to the self-service check out when we had second thoughts about its size. A phone call to Steve confirmed that it was too big for Valerie’s room. And it’s a good thing because the girls and I never would have been able to hoist 70 pounds of glass tabletop into the back of our car and have it still be in one piece.

At 15 minutes before closing, we broke the Ikea rules by going against the arrows and made a mad dash back up to the second floor showroom. Valerie hastily looked at two desks, said, “I like this one,” and we flew back downstairs to fling it – fortunately it only weighed 28 pounds – onto a cart. We made a photo finish to the check out line before the clock struck 9:00. Mission accomplished.

I don’t think I’m alone in this, that as life gets busier the ways we spend our time gets pared down to what is essential. For instance, before we started our own business, I cleaned the house once a week from top to bottom – those busy little cobweb producing spiders would make a bolt for the nearest exit when they saw me coming with my extendable duster and I imagined that the cats actually liked the smell of Pine Sol at the bottoms of their litter boxes.

Now however, with sales calls, billing, and occasionally checking to see how many movies the kids have watched in one day, I feel that if I’ve kept the pink mold in the bathrooms at bay for another week and I’ve vacuumed up the tumbleweeds of dog hair, the house is clean.

However, circumstances can arise which serve to point out the areas of neglect. This happened a couple of weeks ago on an especially hot day when I decided to raise the blinds and open the window in our bathroom to try to get some cross ventilation going. This particular window faced north and until that day, I had ignored it through numerous wet winters and record rainfalls.

I raised the blinds and let them fall back down immediately. “There’s something black and scary there!” It wasn’t Darth Vader’s face or even a big spider that I saw. What horrified me was the thick layer of black grime that was covering what had once been a white aluminum window frame.

I took a breath and summoned up the courage to raise the blinds again for a closer look. Not only was the window frame itself obscured with gunk, but this black plague had worked its way into the paint surrounding the window. I lifted up the bottom edge of the blinds to find that they had become two-toned: white at the top and black on the bottom half. “That’s disgusting!” I shrieked.

For a few minutes, my brain scrambled to come up with what to do now that I had uncovered a deep, dark secret of my housekeeping…or lack thereof. I could ignore it, after all, not once have the kids ever said to me, “I’m really grossed out by that glop of toothpaste, styling gel, and hair on the bathroom countertop,” so I know they have a pretty high tolerance for stuff that makes me cringe. And it would only be over my dead body that anyone besides Steve, me and the kids had access to this particular bathroom in the house, so I really didn’t need to worry about judgment from any guests.

But could I sleep at night knowing that the toxic sludge was probably creeping out of the bathroom and making its way down the hall into the next room? In fact, thinking about the other rooms in the house got me started thinking that it’s been a long time since I lifted the blinds on several other windows in the house. Who knows what evil lurks beneath them?

Okay, so I’m getting a little carried away. It’s nothing that a roll of paper towels, Clorox, a toothbrush, and some elbow grease can’t take care of. And I will as soon as I finish this month’s invoices.

As the school year progresses, I watch the kids’ rooms get more and more overgrown with piles of homework papers, art projects, mementos, and empty Altoid tins…so that by June, I practically have to swing a machete to clear a path to the bed. I do pretty well tolerating the chaos until about Memorial Day – the bright spot is that since there isn’t any exposed floor space it really cuts down on the vacuuming time – but by the last week of school, every time I walk past each of their rooms I find myself uttering a little chant of “I can’t wait until school is out.” Then I walk past the next room, “I can’t wait until school is out.” And so on down the hall.

That’s because once school is out and I’ve given the kids a week-long grace period to decompress from the school year… just to prove that I’m not totally a compulsive organizer…we launch into the annual room purge.

Usually it’s me dragging the kids into the process, but this year, Jennifer was as motivated as I was because she knew that once we had clear-cut the room of all the extraneous paper and plastic, she could experiment with rearranging the furniture and pick out a new comforter that didn’t have cartoon characters on it.

Her inspiration for changing the look of her room came from studying a Pottery Barn Teen catalog. I love that Target knocks off the Pottery Barn designs and sells comforters and lamps that look pretty close to the stuff in the PB catalogue for about a third of the price. Every time I walk into Target and see the same styles and colors that I just saw in the Pottery Barn catalogue, I can’t help but wonder if they’re conducting lie detector tests at PB headquarters to uncover who the Target spy is…

But back to Jennifer’s room…armed with a stack of Trader Joe bags so we can sort the “immediately into the trash” pile from the “give-away” pile from the “pack-up but keep” pile, we start at the doorway and work our way across every surface, drawer, and shelf. On the desk, I can’t help but ask, “Why are you keeping this empty soda bottle? Her reply, “I liked the label.” “I understand, but we can go to Petaluma Market and get you another one.” Into the trash it goes.

The roles are reversed when I come upon a little stuffed doll that we gave her for Christmas one year and Jennifer immediately tells me I can toss it. I remembered the anxiety I had over making sure we had gotten just the right outfit for it and would it arrive from Amazon in time. “Are you sure you don’t want to keep the Angelina doll?” “Mom, you’re the one who wants me to clean out stuff I don’t use anymore.” “You’re right, but I think she’s got a little more life in her, let’s add her to the ‘give-away’ pile.”

We must have thrown away a grocery sack full of the remains of goodie bags from birthday parties: glow-in-the dark sticks, jacks, leis, bouncy balls, markers, and on and on. Since Jennifer’s birthday is only a couple of weeks away, I mention to Jennifer that we should skip the goodie bags and just give everybody a five dollar bill. Think of all the moms I’ll be helping out by not adding to the junk in their daughter’s room.

It takes us almost the entire day, six trips to the trash can, a couple of Swiffers and a new vacuum bag, but when Jennifer surveys the results, her response it that, “I love it! It looks so clean!” At the grocery store that evening, I reward our hard work by buying a tin of Jelly Bellies. As we’re sharing our treat in the car on the way home, Jennifer comments, “I really like this container. I’m going to save it.” 

Last week, I wrote about how I was puzzled that there are hardly any women who have made a career selling used cars. I thought that once I had gotten that off my chest I could move onto the next issue I wanted to vent about. But during the week, this particular bee was still buzzing in my bonnet, until it really struck me as to why I think women would be such good used car salespeople.

Here’s the reason: nowadays everyone assumes that the car they buy is going to run dependably so the decision about which car to purchase isn’t based on mechanics, but on style…whether it will fit their lifestyle and image of themselves. Cars are really just the biggest accessory of our appearance. We “wear” a car as much as we drive it.

Shopping for cars is much more akin to shopping for clothes than machinery. There shouldn’t be used car salesman; there should be used car “stylists.” If dealerships saw it this way, I believe it would change the car buying experience for the better.

Why couldn’t walking onto a used car lot be more like walking into Nordstrom’s? That store personifies service. Sure, I know that the salesperson is going to make a commission on whatever I buy, so it’s in her best interest to sell me something, but there is also the sense that she wants to see me wear something that fits, flatters, and is comfortable. And a really good salesperson brings out lots of good options. Then it’s just a matter of trying stuff on until I find the perfect outfit.

I would love shopping for a car in the same way, where the salesperson, preferably a woman, understands what would suit me, instead of feeling like one of the vampires hanging by the front door will sell me anything with wheels.

When it came time to replace my 10 year old minivan, what I really wanted was a car makeover, a concept a woman understands. I always pictured the way the Caravan looked from the rear and all those rounded lines made me feel very wide. I wanted something that was slimmed down. I test drove at least five different cars before I found one that I literally said, “This fits me. It’s comfortable; I have room to move in it, it matches my image of myself. And I like the way I look in this car.”

Maybe there’s a reality show in the future; instead of “What Not to Wear,” it’s “What Not to Drive.” For instance on one of the episodes, stylists Stacy and Clinton visit a mom who no longer has young kids but is stuck in the past driving a frumpy minivan with juice stains and Goldfish crumbs ground into the upholstery. Because the show is sponsored by Toyota, she gets a check for $30,000 to trade in her old car and guidelines and help her shop for a Toyota that is more suited to her current lifestyle.

She’s interested in a Toyota FJ until Stacy and Clinton show up and point out that is really isn’t a good fit because she still has kids to chauffer around, and the suicide doors are impractical for her needs. There are scenes of Stacy and Clinton riding in the various cars that she test drives, “This Rav4 could work, but I think maybe we should go up a size.” In the end, the mom finds a Highlander that fits her perfectly. She has a new outlook on life and vows never to go back to her old ways.

Yesterday, I did something really out of the ordinary…I cleaned the stove. During the process of trying to scrub away something (could that be gravy from Thanksgiving?) that was cemented to the enamel around the burner, I began to wax nostalgic about how I used to clean the kitchen every week.

A few years ago, I would move everything off the countertops so I could clean all the way into the corners, I’d get down on my hands and knees to scrub the floor, and I Windexed every surface – horizontal and vertical. Then as part of my weekly routine, I would move onto the other rooms in the house. Furniture and lamps in every room were dusted. Every floor was either mopped or vacuumed. I’m sure the cats really appreciated the lemony-fresh smell on the concrete under their litter boxes.

But as the family and number of pets has grown and we started a home-based business, the amount of time and energy required to keep up that level of housecleaning would mean sacrificing other aspects of my life…and I’m just not willing to give up sleeping.

Housework doesn’t seem like it should be a complicated issue, but it is for me. I’m the only one in the family who seems to notice, let alone be bothered, by the layers of fingerprints on the fridge and the tumbleweeds of dog hair rolling through the family room. Since maintaining a certain level of housekeeping is important to me I should be the one to take responsibility for it. But now I have the added demands of working in our marketing business. Yet I’m also very protective about how the chores are done. I guess as my husband says (in the nicest possible way), I’m a control freak.

When he has at times suggested that I could lighten my workload by hiring a housecleaning service, I tell him I appreciate the offer. But really I’m thinking that there is no way I could do that. It would represent that I identified with working more than with running the house. And at this point in my life, I’m still more a mom who works than a working mother.

I have tried to take a much more minimalist and spontaneous approach to cleaning. I don’t scrub the baseboards like my mother used to do. In fact, I don’t think my kids even know what a baseboard is. I only get out the dust cloth when I look at the office desk and see a maze of kitty paw prints. When the kitchen floor starts crunching, I grab a wet paper towel and make a quick sweep around the floor. And I’m considering attaching a Swiffer to our athletic orange cat, Nigel. Perhaps he could do something useful while he’s exploring the top of the refrigerator and the kitchen cabinets that have 13 years of accumulated dust on them.

However, cleaning the bathrooms is one chore that I have trouble letting go of. I know I should give the kids the Tilex and a scrub brush and let them deal with the hair and petrified toothpaste glops in their bathroom. And if they consider the job done when they’ve wiped away enough splatters on the mirror to see their face, then so be it. But I know what a scary place a neglected and overused bathroom can be. I’ve experienced it firsthand; I lived in a sorority house. Can’t a person catch something from mildew run amok?

So I go after the floor and toilet with a vengeance and I leave the sinks and countertops for them to clean. I want to know that scrubbing bubbles have covered every inch of the tile. The only thing that is missing when we’re done is a wrapper to put around the toilet: “Sanitized for your protection.”

Note to self: next time I launch into cleaning the kids’ bathroom and starting complaining about how yucky it is, remember, I volunteered for the job.