MARK MY WORD: WHEN IT COMES TO CLEANING, HAND GRENADES MIGHT HELP

I spied it on the kitchen floor just the other day: a petrified pretzel near the dishwasher.

Those kinds of things just don't happen on the pages of those architectural magazines. Of course, you won't find kids in those homes either.

You won't find toys spilling out all over the floor in those glossy photos. Still life is about the only life in those pictures.

Life isn't like that at our house. With two young kids, it certainly isn't still.

It's also hard to keep the house clean and tidy when your children are around.

Parents like us are forever looking for better ways to clean up, or at least easier ones.

So naturally I perked up when a paperback book titled "Talking Dirt" showed up in the newsroom recently.

The book was written by Jeff Campbell, who is billed as a speed-cleaning expert.

Campbell quit a corporate job just so he could deal with dirt. Now, he has a whole cleaning service in San Francisco that does more than 15,000 home cleanings a year.

It took Campbell years to discover what I already know: No one wants to clean their house if they can help it, particularly when it involves a squeegee.

One chapter deals with kitchen cleaning problems, such as white countertop stains and stinky dishwashers.

The petrified pretzel problem wasn't even mentioned, much to my dismay.

The book is written in a question-and-answer format.

One woman confessed that she spilled coffee, staining her off-white counter. An infection-control nurse, she cleaned it up with bleach.

But now the counter is stained. So what should she do?

Campbell says the best solution is to replace the countertop. But, of course, he advises, clean it one more time first.

My advice is to put more stuff on the counter. That way, the stain won't be even noticed.

If a dishwasher smells bad, it could be from an improperly installed garbage disposal or bad mouthwash.

It also is possible, he says, that gunk has collected in the crevices of the dishwasher. In the case of gunk, which is on the official cleaning person's enemy list, it is a good idea to use a cleaning solution and a toothbrush.

Personally, I don't intend to use by toothbrush on anything as yucky as gunk. My advice is to use a flame thrower and incinerate the whole mess.

Of course, this also means you'll be needing a new dishwasher. But at least you won't have gooey gunk around.

Then there's the case of the painted pet pig. A woman said her husband was painting the fence when their pet pig stepped in the paint, and then ran into the house and across the wooden floor.

If it was oil-based paint, you might want to use lighter fluid, he suggests. Just don't light up.

A few hand grenades might do the trick too. If I were the pig, I wouldn't want to be around for breakfast. At this point, the couple might be thinking of having a little extra bacon.

Of course, frying bacon can lead to those nasty grease stains on the stove, leaving you with another cleanup chore.

And what do you do if the gum is embedded in the carpet?

Campbell says you should cut out part of it if you can, and then dump solvent on it.

That, of course, is after you have yelled at your children for getting the gum on the carpet in the first place.

If the gum is stuck on your child, it's a different matter. You might want to send your kid through a car wash in a convertible with the top down.

That way you'd get a free wax job too, which means you won't have to clean up again for a while.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.