So tell me...do you clean under your fridge and stove often enough to prevent the mess that I found underneath my stove last night? Or, are you turning a blind eye to that space under your major appliances and pretending it doesn't exist. Just wait until you have to move that thing and you know that day will eventually come. That's judgement day for people like you and I. Confess, I won't tell.

-- Anonymous, September 20, 2000

Answers

On the first and fifteenth of each month we move the refrigerator out into the middle of the kitchen so we can thoroughly scrub and mop and then wax the floor where it usually stands and only when the floor is brightly sparkling do we move the 'fridge back into place.

Yeah, right....

-- Anonymous, September 20, 2000

Twice a year under the Fridge, stove is immovable but take the big bottom drawer out and clean floor from there. The shame of the family was the room/warehouse I occupied (had a bed in there). When we cleaned, painted, bought a swivel chair and 6 foot desk table AND gave away a library full of books, threw out non-essentials, put the furniture in a logical arrangement -- voila -- a shame no longer.

-- Anonymous, September 20, 2000

I'm terrified to know what's under my stove. TERRIFIED, I tell you.

I don't want to find any dead little animal carcasses, or wads of hair from someone who lived in my house before me or nasty old pasta or mouse turds or dead bugs or crusty pennies or numerous hairy, sticky cat toys or plain old gunk.

It freaks. me. out.

So much so that I live with a stove that only has two working burners on it. Simply because I am so scared to know what is living or once lived and is now decaying underneath it. I am being held prisoner by my stove, people. It is not funny.

And if I ever drop something, and it rolls under the stove, I let it remain there. I'm too scared to grab a flashlight and look under the stove. I just know I'll catch see two eyes staring back at me or I'll catch a glimpse of something moving or something will try to bite my fingers off.

The area under any major household appliance is just plain S.C.A.R.Y.

-- Anonymous, September 20, 2000

I don't look. I simply DO NOT LOOK! :-) Though I do happen to have one of those little swiffer sweepers so I do down the sides of it, and there was that one time that I had to pull out the stove a little to reach the top of a saucepan ... and bent the swiffer sweeper trying to use it to manouvre it up into reach.

I'm sure I'd find a heap of dust, and a heap of those "not quite daddy long legs" spiders that are all whispy and like to get into absolutely everything, and which I can't manage to erradicate even with as much as I try.

But in general, I just don't look...

Lilu

-- Anonymous, September 20, 2000

The Kenmoor Rule: If you can't move it without the assistance of at least two brother-in-laws (or a husband and one brother-in-law, or equivalent individuals), you are not required to clean under it. You simply clean the inch-thick layer of gunk at the time said appliance requires moving. However, if you can put off moving said appliance until you want to redo the floor beneath it, cleaning the area becomes infinitly unnecessary. Move appliance; rip up floor; put down new floor; and while you are at it, buy new appliance.

This doesn't answer the question at hand, but I felt it was important to share this rule with your readers. :)

-- Anonymous, September 20, 2000

There used to be a bunch of sticks under my parent's fridge. Odd you think? Not if you have cats. Our particular meowing munchkin went through a phase where he was conviced he was a dog badly in need of a game of fetch and bury. He would go to our wood pile (we had a wood burning stove for years and years), pick a suitably large stick, and then carry it into the kitchen where he would then attempt to bury it in the linoleum. Failing in this pursuit, he would bat the stick under the fridge and repeat performance the next day. He did this for about a month. This means that when my dad finally cleaned under the fridge for various sundry reasons many years later, there were quite a few cat rejected un-bury-able-in-linoleum sticks among the dirt and dead spiders.

-- Anonymous, September 21, 2000

I have to go with the majority on this one. My appliances and I have an agreement. I won't do nasty things to them as long as they don't do anything (as in break or explode) which requiers me to move them. Because moving the appliance is the only way you could get me to look under there. And I have the added benefit of being a renter, so those appliances aren't even mine. I had maintanence fix them up for probably the first time in the past 20 years when I moved in, and now the appliances love me and protect me from the scary space underneath of them.

Let me put it this way. I've seen the bugs that will venture out into the light in my place. I absolutely do NOT want to know which ones are nasty enough to still be in hiding. Seriously. Ask me sometime and I'll share. Although that isn't recommended for the squeamish.

-- Anonymous, September 21, 2000

I'm way too scared to check what's underneath anything in our kitchen.

Good thing (??) I still live with my parents and don't have to worry :)

-- Anonymous, September 21, 2000

You mean, your supposed to clean under your stove and your fridge? I think I skipped that page in the Marth Stewart "How to clean your home" book.

Hee Hee. No, I don't ever move my stove and fridge to clean but then again, I usually move once a year so honestly, how much crap can collect in that amount of time?

Nicole

-- Anonymous, September 24, 2000

Hey folks, you think not cleaning under your appliances is bad? How about not cleaning under your floor? When my wife and I bought this old house, we thought the kitchen floor was kinda squishy, like maybe rotten boards underneath. Well, we tore out the tile, and underneath it we found: a spool of thread, a pair of scissors, a newspaper dating from 1936, 3 half-smoked cigars, some chicken bones, at least 8 buttons, a pair of pants, 5 old-fashioned pressed-paper meat trays, a harmonica, several jigsaw puzzle pieces, half of a wig, a bicycle pedal, and lotsa other stuff I forget just now. Hey folks, if you at least sweep the floor before putting your new tile in, you're doing pretty great by comparison!

-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000