I Never Knew I Was Obsessive-Compulsive...

...until I borrowed a power washer!

It all started last year. I looked out the front doors at church (they are glass, I do not have x-ray vision) and saw one of our members using a power washer on our sidewalk. He said he noticed it was dirty/stained and decided to make it look better. I was impressed, and so he took me over to my house and showed me what a good job it did of cleaning my foundation.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. We were talking about the Easter picnic at church and I mentioned that we needed to wash the picnic tables. Last time we had a picnic, the tables were really nasty. When I said that, I remembered the power washer. So that afternoon, I emailed our friend with the power washer and asked him if he could come power wash the picnic tables.

Last week. I was looking at my back porch and thinking about the power washer. I had an idea. I called our friend again and asked if I could come get the power washer and clean the picnic tables myself. And then, could I keep it for another day or two and wash my back porch? He said "sure".

Yesterday. Stan and I power washed the picnic tables (with a little help from 409 Cleaner and a scrub brush). I was going to wait until my day off today to start on the back porch, but just looking at the dirty bricks was too much for me. I was just going to do the porch and two areas where water runs down the wall (it makes stuff grow on the brick!). But if you sweep past the area you are aiming at with the power washer, it makes a mark on the next dirty brick. So you have to clean that one too...and then you see that the brick next to that one is dirty. Well, there is no sense in having a clean brick if the one next to it is so obviously dirty. And so there is one more. And now, the brick that was two bricks away from the clean one is right next to a clean one, and you can see how dirty that is one is. So you clean that one, too. And this is where the obsessive-compulsive disorder kicks in. I ended up washing my back porch and the entire back wall of my house! Since there was nothing else in sight, I cleaned the machine up, put it back in the box and set it by my front door to take back to church.

Today. I was on my way to get something from church so I grabbed the power washer to take it with me. But then I stepped onto the front porch and what did I see? A DIRTY STONE PORCH! These need to be power washed!! So I washed the front porch, the front walk, the walk beside the front porch, the stones under the front window, the side door of the garage, the pillars that hold up the porch and much of the front wall of my house. And I thought I was done...until I just realized as I was typing this that I washed only the SIDE door of the garage. I have this huge door in the front. How could I miss that? It's a good thing I haven't taken the washer back to church yet!