The Mom Weekly Volume 149: June 16, 2026
You can read this, or any other previous Mom Weeklies, by going to the home page here.
Notes
I hope you were able to celebrate Flag Day is a small way! I’m going to try to make it more an “event” in my life going forward. It makes me happy to do so.
Speaking of holidays, this Sunday is Father’s Day, so this is your reminder to reach out to Dad, send a card, etc.
Remember how much I love you,
Mom
The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good
I purchased a scrubber tool kind of on a whim from Costo last month, and it sat in the back entryway for a long time until I was ready to tackle it and figure out how it works.
I finally did so a few weeks ago, and I was really pleasantly surprised with how well it cleaned off hard water stains from sinks. We have hard water here, and even though we have a water softener, the water leaves such a weird cast on the faucets and residue on the sinks. They don’t seem dirty, and they aren’t dirty when you clean them, but it takes so much scrubbing to get them relatively shiny. Even with that elbow grease, they never look “great” and it’s often an annoying prospect.
It doesn’t help that I actively dislike two sink/cabinet combos that the previous owners put in during their gut remodel of parts of the house. In our bathroom, the sink is comically high off the ground, so much so that I can’t easily wash my face in it. So I get water all over myself and the side of the sink/floor when I do wash my face.
The first floor powder room sink is unattractive and too big for the space, and also too high. I don’t think the previous owners were super tall people, but the sinks are just not great!
(In case you were wondering, no, they weren’t DIYers. They used a very “high end” local firm that does “fancy work.” But I’m not impressed, at all, and wouldn’t use them for a renovation.)
Anyway… I finally opened the scrubber tool (it’s this brand) and read about how to make it work. I actually had to also watch a YouTube video to see how to recharge the unit. And I tried it for a few minutes on the powder room sink. I used some water and Barkeeper/s Friend, and rinsed thoroughly afterwards.
Reader, it worked really well!
Even though I didn’t have time right then to be super thorough, the work I did made real difference in both the faucet and the sink.
A few days after that, I was giving baths to the dogs, and I realized, I should really clean this bathroom. (It’s not used very much).
Related question why do bathrooms get so dusty in addition to dirty? It’s so annoying!
After the baths were over, I decided to get out the tool and clean this bathroom. Again, the tool did really great work, and the bathroom looked sooo much nicer than before. And so I cleaned another bathroom.
I took a few photos, intending to share with our family chat with the caption, “You may admire my handiwork.” When I looked at the photos, however, it didn’t look “perfect.” These are old bathrooms, and while the tile is kind of cool and old-fashioned looking, you could still see some water stains, and some discoloration of the bathtub that cleanser won’t get out.
I was discouraged for a moment, because I thought, “darn, I worked hard, and the scrubber tool worked well, and it looks nice and I want people to admire it!” And then the phrase “The perfect is the enemy of the good” came into my head.
The bathrooms do look much, much better than when I started. But even if I had take before and after photos, I might have still been dissatisfied with the finished product.
So. I sent the photos and instructed, “You may admire my handiwork.”
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.” I needed to be happy with a “good enough” (actually great) and sparkling bathrooms, even if they weren’t perfect.
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Reflecting on this made me think that cultivating happiness and satisfaction with work we have completed, is extremely important. It’s important to ourselves and other.
The perfect is the ENEMY of the good. Perfectionism is actively a bad thing, not a neutral. This can be true in our work, in our relationships, and more.
Let’s take The Mom Weekly, for instance. Some weeks I know that I “hit it out of the park” with a really funny or insightful Weekly. Sometimes it is pretty good, and sometimes, it is completed, because I intend to “ship it” every week. And all are fine.
But being happy and being able to celebrate “good enough” or “great” or “completed” is good and helpful, and an important life skill.
You may admire my handiwork!
Interesting/Notable
To-Do List Before Driving Off in a Rental Car–Autoslash blog
I saved this article a long time ago, but it seems apropos with upcoming travel!
The one potentially “dated” aspect of this was using the “penny test” to check the tire treads. Place a penny, Lincoln’s head side down, into the tire. If part of his head is covered, the tire is fine. Conversely, if you can see all of his head, the tires are not great.
But pennies are no longer in circulation! I guess it’s worth keeping a penny in your wallet for this purpose, just like we keep a quarter in our cars for Aldi carts.
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