House Cleaning Day 4

Today is day 4 of Spring Cleaning! I feel myself getting buffer and buffer, as I buff out the scratch marks in the paint of closets and walls with the super duper Mr. Clean Magic Eraser! That thing is amazing! When I get home, I'm buying me some to clean my walls and dressers and laptop and everything!

Sarah (one of the waitresses) and I, Tilex-ing the shower. Oh, the fumes.

Chelsea (one of the wranglers) with the Baby-O vacuum and Sarah getting a breath of fresh air!

Courtney (another waitress) being Cinderella and scrubbing the fireplace.

Caroline (cabin girl), taking out the precious glass fixture to clean. She is also going to dust each ceiling fan blade. We do a thorough job here at Lost Valley!

I thought it was funny that we put Anna, the shortest girl kitchen girl, on the ceiling job. Go Anna! You'll notice that a lot of the crews are helping out with the Spring Cleaning, because it is a HUGE undertaking. I think it's so nice that everyone pitches in to get things done!

Another example of how seriously we take Spring Cleaning... Sarah, here, is using a toothbrush and a Q-tip to dust the grill behind the refrigerator. It is amazing.

Vacuuming the furniture. Hide-a-bed! Ooh, one fun fact. We have to put a mattress pad on the hide-a-bed mattress. If we don't, we lose our AAA four diamond award (which we've gotten every year for the past 30 years).

Loading up Corona, the cabin girl van! I'm not sure why it's named that...

So, don't report us to any authorities, but we ride around the ranch like this: one driver, two girls wedged in the front passenger seat, and up to two girls standing in the opening of the sliding doors, holding on to the van for dear life. This doesn't include any girls that have found room between the brooms, buckets, bags of blankets, vacuums, and other cleaning supplies that we take with us to each cabin.

A clean vanity. Can you see the wood shine? It's because it's been Liquid Gold-ed!

A finished fireplace, complete with a handy fire extinguisher.

A finished bathroom. Everything has to be done a certain way. The shower curtain liner has to be on the opposite side of the faucet. The bath mat has to be placed in the center of the tub, with the soap placed on the center of the mat. There has to be one folded towel on the top of the toilet, along with a new toilet paper roll. There are so many other things to remember, but these are some of them. We do things right, here at Lost Valley.

I love funny poems. This one is a set of instructions on how to clean your riding boots at the end of a long day, riding horses. Yeah, there's a lot of muck you walk through... and it would suck if it was tracked onto the carpet. I have so much respect for the cabin girls that clean every day.

This chalkboard hangs on the side of the front door of each cabin. It has a little pail of chalk and a rag to erase with. Cute, ain't it? If we know, ahead of time, the names of the guests who are staying in the cabin, we'll write "Welcome ________!" Isn't that nice, personal touch? I love it!

And now for the explanation of our brand. We bought the LVL brand along with the ranch in the 50's. It is one of the last "mirror brands". It should be just "LV", to stand for "Lost Valley", but because of the mirror-ing of the brand, the first "L" looks like a "J", and there's an extra "L" at the end to make it a mirror image. "V" is already symmetrical, so... yeah. Confused? I still am, a bit. I'll have to have it explained to me again some day. Until then, just accept it.

P.S. 13 cabins down, 11 more to go! Oooo-ah!