I will be completely honest with you all. I hate cleaning. I hate it, and I’m not good at it, and I mostly don’t do it. When the dust gets thick enough to write my name, I write “Clean Me” in the dust with my finger just for fun, and then I wipe it away. My Roomba vacuum cleaner named Rosie does my floor sweeping. My husband named Bill does the mopping.

He, on the other hand, does like to clean. I always laugh when I open up our laundry room cupboards and see the plethora of cleaning supplies they hold……

For someone who hates cleaning as much as me, those cupboards contain a lot of cleaning supplies. None — not a single one — purchased by moi. All purchased at various and sundry times by Bill. Well, I may have purchased the disinfectant wipes in a time when you could actually find them. Back when we were all concerned about bird flu.

My sister Jen knows about Bill’s propensity to clean, especially floors. So when we visited her a week or so ago, she said to him (with a decided gleam in her eye), “Sit right there, Bill, I have something to show you that is going to make your day.” Oh boy, I thought. What does she have up her sleeve?

She appeared with a Bissell Spinwave Cordless Floor Cleaner. She flipped the switch to on and began demonstrating how she could clean her wood floor with only one hand and without breaking into a sweat. It was miraculous to behold. Before I could say Mr. Clean, he had one ordered from Amazon.

Like the little boy in The Music Man who was eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Wells Fargo Wagon, Bill daily checked our front porch for the delivery of our Bissell Spinwave Cordless Floor Cleaner. Finally, it arrived on Sunday.

Bill read the instructions, and explained to me that it had to charge for four hours before it could be used. As if he actually thought I was going to eagerly grab the Bissell to begin a floor cleanathon. I don’t even know where we keep our broom.

Sunday evening when I went upstairs to take my shower and get ready for bed, Bill had begun floor cleaning. I could hear the whirring as I prepared to hit the sack. Before turning off my light, I went downstairs to say goodnight to Bill. I couldn’t help but notice that the whirring sound was gone, and he was looking perplexed. I asked him what was going on, and he explained that the battery had died.

“What?” I exclaimed. “I can’t believe it’s already dead.”

“Well, I did most of the first floor before it died,” he said weakly.

Now, we don’t live in a Tiny House, but we also don’t live in the White House. He had cleaned the kitchen, the dining room, his office, and the hallways, none of which are massive. It made no sense that it had already run out of power.

He plugged it in, and sadly said he would wait until the next day to finish. Except the next day (which was yesterday), it still wasn’t fully charged. We waited a few more hours to no avail. Our Bissell Spinwave Cordless Floor Cleaner was a bust.

After trying all of the troubleshooting ideas, he began making motions about calling Bissell to find out what was wrong. Knowing full well what a phone call to a huge company would entail (just how many times would he have to holler REP-RE-SEN-TA-TIVE?), I stepped in.

“Here’s what we do,” I said. “I go on Amazon and return the item. I tell them I will return it at a Kohl’s. They will send me a skew. We will drive to Kohl’s, hand them the Bissell Spinwave Cordless Floor Cleaner, get our receipt and wait for Amazon to send us a replacement.”

And that’s exactly what we did. Our new and hopefully working Bissell Spinwave Cordless Floor Cleaner will arrive June 8.

God bless Amazon. God bless Kohl’s. God bless Bill for enjoying cleaning the floor…..

Bill, during happier times when he thought our Bissell wasn’t a bust.