Why cleaning (sometimes) pays off

I went to the bathroom.  Number 1, I swear!!  And when I flushed the water kept rising and rising.  Our toilet almost never clogs, so I was really dumbfounded.  I grilled Josh about it.  It wasn’t him.  So we looked at each other and thought, oh crap (no pun intended), what did the kids flush?

The boys are nearly asleep when this is happening so I went in their room and talked to Jude about it:

"Did you put anything in the toilet?"

"No."

"Did Jett put anything in the toilet?"

"Yes."

"What did he put in the toilet?"

"Paper."

"What kind of paper?"

"White."

"Was it toilet paper?"

"No."

"Where did the paper come from?"

"The mailbox."

Ok, that’s somewhat of a relief.  Paper will eventually disintegrate, right?  Josh begins to plunge the toilet, I mean he’s really going for it.  Hands down in the toilet bowl and everything.  Nothing is happening.  The water level is low, so he flushes.  Oh no!  Not low enough… water starts spilling over the side.  There are little bits of paper everywhere and we can’t really tell for sure what kind of paper it was – it looked like toilet paper, and a lot of it.

Josh got a little bucket and a cup and started bailing water out of the toilet bowl into the bath tub.

We got a wire clothes hanger, straightened it out and poked it the entire length of pipe and doesn’t come across any obstructions.

A couple more times of this flushing and plunging and bailing water and finally the toilet came unclogged – we never did find out what kind of paper was stuffed down in there. 

Crisis averted.  We were so glad it wasn’t a toy that we’d have to pay someone to remove.

The great part of this story is that since I’ve been doing FlyLady’s Swish and Swipe routine, I’d cleaned the bathroom (toilet included) for each of the last three days and the toilet area itself was super clean and pleasant.  In that moment, I think Josh was thankful for my newfound cleaning routine. 

I’m starting to annoy (and surprise) myself with all this cleaning talk lately.  Sorry, you’ll have to bear with me.  Who would have thought?!  Once it becomes second nature to me and not a revelatory concept, I’m sure I won’t write about it as often!