Category Archives: clean

scurryfunge.

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who’s with me on this? have any of you also scurryfunged? 

To scurryfunge is to hurriedly clean the house before company arrives. This word has had a looser meaning of “to move rapidly” since the early 19th century but likely wasn’t used in the sense of a rapid cleanup until the 1950s, when it appeared in U.S. regional dialects. One definition was included in the 1975 book Maine Lingo by John Gould: “a hasty tidying of the house between the time you see a neighbor coming and the time she knocks on the door.” “Scurry” means “to move in or as if in a brisk pace,” but “Funge” remains a bit of an etymological mystery. This is debated. Some sources say it was a word in Old English, others say it is of “jocular formation.’’

 

 

 

 

source credits: babushka cat, interesting words, maine lingo, john gould

 

 

elbow grease.

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kinder know that if you’re going to work hard, always dress for the occasion.
“elbow grease is the best polish.”
– english proverb

germ.

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spent time in my classroom

doing some pre-planning with my team

and saw how thorough

our summer cleaning crew had been.

i especially loved the note they left on the chairs:

they did not merely say

‘chairs cleaned’

but instead they kicked it up a notch to an ’11’

 the ‘disinfected’ level

for the kinders’ chairs.

i can certainly appreciate that.

“growth itself contains the germ of happiness.”

-pearl s. buck