Hippies Stole My Ethylene-based Glycol Ethers Cleaning Supplies

One morning, about three months into the pregnancy, I woke up and noticed that all the household cleaners were gone. That’s right, gone. Everything from the toilet bowl cleaner to dishwashing soap to the spray that poorly attempts to mask bathroom odors had disappeared sometime during the night. Not being a morning person, my first thought was that I was in the wrong house. After a few seconds of panic, I realized I was being ridiculous, and had a second thought. We'd been robbed. I couldn't believe it. I had purposely rented the top floor of a Brownstown so that if robbers did break in, they would rob our downstairs neighbors first. Their hands filled with goods from the first apartment, they would be unable to then rob us. It was the cheapest form of rental insurance I could find. This is not a joke. I literally brag about this strategy to my friends. How could I have been so wrong? Then it occurred to me, we'd been robbed by hippies. Hippies came in and stole our cleaning supplies, thinking they were bad for the environment. I then came to my senses and had a third thought - I should get a gun. Keeping that thought in mind I did the next most sensible thing and checked the freezer. All my meat was still there. That ruled out hippies. There was only one possibility left. I called my wife, who was already at work in the city. (That's right, hippies, I work from home so I wake up when I want.) Our phone conversation went as follows:


Her: Hi!

Me: How am I supposed to eat breakfast?

Her: What?

Me: There are no clean bowls, how am I supposed to eat breakfast?

Her: I am busy, why are you calling me about this. Just wash a bowl.

Me: AHA!!!

Her: What?

Me: I CAN’T wash a bowl, there is no dish washing soap! And while we are on the subject, where are all the rest of the cleaning supplies?

Her: Oh, (in the same tone of voice one would use when not disclosing something crazy), I got rid of them.

Me: What, why?

Her: That book I am reading (see previous post) told me to go to some websites about cleaning supplies, and they said that our cleaning supplies are killing our baby.

Me: What? Killing our baby? You don’t even use the cleaning supplies, how could they be killing the baby? (Ever since I started working from home, a symptom of being laid off from my finance job back in Nov 08', I have taken over cleaning duties, hence the perpetually full sink of dishes.)

Her: I don't want them in the house around the baby. I am going to buy safe cleaning supplies on my way home. And by the way, we need to get a steam mop. I don’t have time to do the research, so can you find a good one and buy it?

Me: What?

Her: I have to go, I am busy. Bye.

Click.

I stood in the kitchen in my boxers unsure of what to do next. On the one hand, I was angry. I had spent a long time collecting my large and varied collection of cleaning supplies. I had two half used bottles of Windex. I had grand plans of one day using that Windex to clean the smudges off the inside of my car windshield. I had various other lemon and orange scented cleaners that made the house smell like, well, oranges and lemons. How could that be bad? Also, I am thrifty. I hate throwing things away, poisonous or not, and the thought of buying all new cleaning supplies made me mad.

On the other hand, I was hungry. Crying over lost cleaning supplies was not going to get me breakfast any sooner, so I made oatmeal in a mug. It was like college. I loved it.

Later, I went to the websites that had informed my wife that we were killing our fetus by cleaning our toilets. As I suspected, they made all sorts of claims about chemicals that are used in cleaning supplies. They blamed the government. They blamed corporate greed. They recommended we replace all our cleaning supplies with coconut-based cleaners from Duane Reade. I hate to admit it, but they might have been right. More on this below.

When my wife came home that evening she had a large bag of new cleaning supplies, which of course cost three times as much as the stuff we had been using in the past. She had about six different items, all from a ridiculous neo-hipster brand named 'apt 5 goes green'. I want to shoot a hippie just thinking about the name. Each bottle had a bright green label and bragged in large type that its contents were biodegradable and nontoxic. I have them in from of me. They all claim to have a different purpose, yet they all have the SAME EXACT ingredients in them; water, coconut-based cleaning agent, and corn-based ethanol. So, basically, they are tricking hippie consumers into buying several different types of cleaning agents, even though they are basically all the same thing. Who are the corporate greed-motivated blood suckers now?

She also bought new dish soap, which does nothing to actually clean dishes. I now have to spend an extra 15 minutes washing dishes to get them clean. At a gallon a minute, that is 15 gallons of water wasted. So much for being environmentally friendly... If any of you have ever used 'green' dishwashing soap you know what I mean. We tried several, and almost none of them work. We finally settled on one brand that does the job, after my wife promised that the active ingredients in the $6 'green' soap were the same as in the $1 generic soap. If the ingredients are the same, then what makes it more 'green', you might ask. I would respond, "It is more green, because it is certified by hippies. And everyone knows that hippies always know what they are talking about. Also, pregnant women always know what they are talking about.”

The moral of this unnecessarily long story is, I really was robbed by hippies. Hippies that write books and publish nonsense websites and fill pregnant women's heads with fear and terror. They robbed me of my beloved cleaning supplies, and they robbed my wife of her sanity. All the third floor apartments, rental insurance companies and guns in the world cant protect you from this kind of theft. Beware.

P.S. As much as I hate to admit it, cleaning toilets is slightly less annoying with the new cleaning supplies, since I no longer choke on chemical fumes. But, its the fumes that let you know its working, right?