There has been mold growing in the crack where the wall of my shower meets the tub for about two months. I keep telling myself that I will go deal with it, but usually I remember when I have two kids to look after and you really can’t pull out the bleach and scrub a tub while you are holding an infant and coercing your two year old away from the chemicals. Last night at about eleven I had both kids asleep so I decided that in lieu of heading to bed like a normal person, I would clean the tub.

I hauled out the jug of bleach my mother had purchased for this very reason and lugged it to the bathroom. I started pouring the bleach over the edges where the mold was growing. It didn’t seem to be having much effect, so I poured even more bleach over the spots. Then I realized that the tub could do with a little cleaning to so I poured the rest of the jug into the tub and started the water running.

Oh how my throat and nose started to burn! I gasped and had to leave the bathroom. While I was out I dug through my cleaning stuff until I found an old toothbrush to use to scrub at the spots. Walking bath into the bathroom was like walking into an overly chlorinated indoor pool. I threw the window open and started scrubbing. The burning sensation came back fairly quickly and a sort of weird lightheaded feeling accompanied it. “I’ll just get this last spot up,” I thought, scrubbing madly.

I realized that I was starting to get a little high off of the fumes, so I ran downstairs for some fresh air again. A few minutes later, when I returned the fumes were a little less deadly, so I continued scrubbing and discovered that while the bleach was doing a great job getting rid of the nasty mold, it was also eating the caulk. I’ve never seen it do that, but I don’t think I’ve ever used quite this much bleach on something before.

When I was expecting Jonas I had a few weird months of nesting where I cleaned the kitchen twice a day with bleach. My hands dried out and my cuticles cracked and bled. But I was pregnant and crazy, so it didn’t even phase me. My pregnancy induced OCD behavior made perfect sense to me. The good thing was I didn’t get a single cold or flu while I was pregnant. Bleach kills germs pretty effectively. Maybe I ought to clean with it more often seeing as how the whole family has been sick for two weeks.

Anyway, the tub got scrubbed. It looks great and hopefully the missing hunks of caulk won’t cause a leak that makes it rain in the kitchen.