Purr-ifier Makes Cat Stink a Thing of the Past

This is going to sound like a completely made up lie for the sake of this review, but I assure you it's 100% the truth:

One day, as I sat down at the sofa table that serves as a desk in my toddler's bedroom which serves as my office (because I'm fancy), Chauncey (my cat) availed himself of the litter box, which is conveniently (for him - not me) located in the bathroom right next to my office/toddler bedroom.

I'll spare you the details because I like you, but suffice it to say - the smell was bad.

Really bad.

Like, I'm-not-going-to-be-able-to-get-any-work-done bad.

Exactly.

But unfortunately, not getting work done isn't really an option, so as I'm often forced to do, I opened the window and pressed my face against the screen to gasp at the fresh air while I checked my email.

Now, that's not the part that sounds like a lie - I'm sure that's exactly how glamorous you envision my life to be, on the rare occasions when you bother to envision my life.

The part that sounds like a lie, but is true, is that right then I happened to open an email from Purr-ifier, the nice people with an awesome system that's reported to be a "powerful new way to control litter box odor," asking if I'd have any interest in reviewing their product. Nice timing!

"UM, YES PLEASE," I typed while holding my breath, vowing not to burn the litter box down and salt the earth where it stood until I gave Purr-ifier a chance to work its magic.

Not my actual cat.
Not my actual bathroom, either
- no way has it ever been that clean.

When the device arrived, I sent my husband in with his hazmat suit to install it. It was really fast and easy to set up - it just goes right on top of the litter box - aside from the fact that, since the cat's occasional stench prevents us from ever using that bathroom, we'd completely forgotten the only outlet in there is ON THE CEILING.

Because, as I mentioned, we're fancy.

So he draped the cord across the room and up to the ceiling (good thing the cord's nice and long!) and immediately declared the Purr-ifier was... broken.

"What? NO! It can't be!" I exclaimed, holding my sleeve over my nose to protect myself from the air in that general area.

But my husband, being a clever fellow with excellent mechanical skills, quickly discovered the problem - he just couldn't hear it. Yup, the Purr-ifier is SO QUIET, we couldn't even tell it was working!

But soon enough we could definitely tell it was working; we still couldn't hear anything, but we couldn't smell anything either.

It's been glorious.

No more checking email with my face pressed up against the window screen! The down side is I don't have an excuse for not getting any work done, but as a bonus we've gained a bathroom that you can actually use now because it doesn't smell like litter box anymore! I mean, you can use it as long as you don't plan on trying to plug in anything, like a hair dryer or curling iron, since the outlet is in the ceiling and all. But I wasn't planning on doing that anyway.

I'm not that fancy.

I was compensated for this review, but the opinions and new ability to use my upstairs bathroom are MINE, ALL MINE!

Better Together

I keep my wardrobe pretty simple in the summertime.

And by simple, I mean I have about six articles of clothing that I wear over and over.

And by "six articles of clothing," really I mean just one style of tank top and one style of capris, which I bought in three colors each when I finally found some that fit, so technically that might only count as two articles of clothing.

The waist of the capris covers the old muffin top nicely, but still falls low enough that it doesn't look like I imported them from 1974. The leg goes near enough to the ankle to cover most of the spider veins, but also comes high enough that they look like actual capris and not full length pants that shrunk in the dryer.

The tank tops don't show any my middle real estate when I bend over, but they're short enough not to cause a bulky pocket-lump over the seat of the capris. The arm holes fall perfectly under my arms, neither choking off circulation to my armpits, nor hanging so low they show the world the side of my fancy hot pink sports bra.

Put the two together and you have an unbeatable summer clothes combo - perfect for cook outs or veg outs, never looking like I tried too hard to get dressed up, but also looking slightly more pulled together than my winter wardrobe of yoga pants and sweatshirts.

In any case, comfort is key. Also, never going shopping for summer clothes again is key, because I deeply value my time and sanity and self esteem. So making my beloved capris and tanks last as long as possible is one of my top priorities, even more important than figuring out why we never seem to have any sunscreen except for 37 half-empty bottles of SPF5000 for the kids.

I'm having really good luck so far with my new wardrobe-saving laundry regimen. We're using Tide detergent, Downy fabric softener, and Bounce dryer sheets. Together, they're keeping my precious capris and tanks from getting threadbare and falling apart at the seams, which is saving me from having to view myself in any changing room mirrors. Not only that, but my clothes are soft, and they smell good - but not so good that I get chased by bees when I go outside. Winning!

Attribution Statement: This post is sponsored by P&G. With Tide®, Downy® and Bounce®, you can keep your summer fashions looking new up to 50% longer.* Text CLEAN to TARGET (827438) for mobile coupons. *vs. leading value detergent alone

At Least I'm Not Killing The Environment

I have to admit, my kids' social lives have probably suffered to some extent thanks to my crippling social awkwardness.

I'm scared of the other moms, I get nervous about my kids playing at other kids' houses, and I don't care much for someone else's offspring coming over to break stuff and eat all my food.

I know! I'm horrible!

I want to be That Mom, the one who always has a house full of random children and never runs out of snacks and doesn't mind when somebody spills red Kool Aid on the carpet or spits gum into the bushes. The one who invites the other moms in and makes a joke that everyone laughs at instead of shifting their weight and staring uncomfortably at the floor.

I'll bet that mom doesn't have to do an Emergency Whole-House Cleaning when she finally decides to host a playdate.

But of course I  did. Because naturally, when I finally called to invite my son's friend over, the only day that worked for his mom was THE NEXT DAY.

Keep in mind, we hadn't met in person yet. If she saw the natural state of my house, I can pretty much guarantee her darling boy would be immediately marched straight back to the car, which I guess wouldn't have mattered much to me because I'd already be dead from the embarrassment.

Thus the full house scrub-down.

However, the only cleaners I had around were "green" cleaners, when the filth in my house normally only responds to a chair and a whip, or heavy industrial solvents.

If you must know (Stop nagging me for all my valuable cleaning secrets!) it was the Elements All Surface Cleaner kit, containing three of the many available cleaning products from Clean It Supply, the largest green cleaning supply source on the innerweb. Don't try to hide it, I know you're impressed.

I was terrified the woman might ask to use the bathroom, so first I rushed the Organic Acid Restroom Cleaner (which manages to sound both earthy and  industrial) into our entirely too organic restroom, and spritzed it in the general direction of the hard water deposits on the sink. I could tell by the way the smell of it didn't burn the hair out my nostrils that it wasn't going to work... except it did!

Emboldened by my success, I used the glass cleaner on the mirror in case she wanted to see her reflection instead of the kids' toothpaste splatters - again, success!

Then the All Surface Cleaner was put to the test in the kitchen. Here we ran into some problems, as I encountered the following:

• milk poured on the counter four seconds after I wiped it off
• multiple snack requests
• baby shaking juice out of her "spill-proof" sippy cup onto the floor
• pretzel crumbs courtesy of curious on-lookers
• one "You missed a spot."
• no less than four "Why are you cleaning?"s

These interruptions resulted in limited kitchen cleaning success, though you can hardly fault the spray cleaner for that. Where my kids didn't undo my efforts, the stuff worked great - as a bonus, it smelled very faintly of pina colada, which helped with the escape fantasy I was living inside my head.

So, much to my surprise, the green cleaners actually cleaned  stuff, plus I didn't have chemical hands when the baby suddenly needed to be picked up rightnow, I didn't ruin my clothes like I usually do with bleachy cleaners, and my nose hair remained intact (okay, the upside of that last one is debatable).

Just in time, too - the kid and (more importantly, of course) his mom were due any minute. I surveyed the house and was pleased. It looked... as good as I could expect it to look.

I was sure to impress her!

Then I heard her pull in the driveway, and what did I see when I looked outside?

The people across the street were parking their car in the yard, narrowly skimming past their two dozen frothy-mouthed dogs, which were roiling around on the muddy ground with several younguns. Meanwhile, the adults set up lawn chairs and rolled a gigantic turkey fryer into the driveway.

I can't make this stuff up, people.

Let me repeat: no doubt to assist me with making a good first impression, my neighbors, for entertainment, were sitting in the driveway (which is on an incline, but I'm not even going to address the stupidity of putting a giant, flaming vat of oil on wheels at the top of a hill), in weather-beaten old lawn chairs to watch a turkey fry and possibly watch one or more of the dogs hump something.

It was like the Beverly Hillbillies had adopted the Bumpus hounds and relocated to my street.

Not the best way to impress a guest.

Luckily, she was very gracious and pretended not to notice. What really saved me, though, was the clean(ish)(er) house, and the fact that I still had the bottles of eco-friendly cleanser sitting on the table, highlighting my virtuous concern for the environment and whatnot.

I like to think she was silently dazzled by the fact that I care enough about the planet to use biodegradable green cleaners, so she gave me a pass on the pretzel crumbs and the Three Stooges action across the street.

Or maybe she was just waiting for me to offer her a pina colada. Hmm, I like her already.

UPDATE: The mom is still taking my calls, and Gerry was curious enough about "Organic Acid" that he used it to clean the toilet. Related: I'm now convinced these bottles have magical powers. Also, I was compensated for this post, but all my opinions remain my own, including the one I have of my neighbors.

The Top Mommy Blog button below probably has magical powers too, but you have to click it to find out for sure...