Greetings, fresh back from spring break! You know that time of year - when your kid is bouncing off the walls from being at school so much that it’s only fair that he bounce around some walls around you again. And the thing that’s annoying about it is the timing every year - it’s always the same week that everybody else and their kids go on vacation. If you are on a “staycation,” you might notice your hometown just got a little more crowded and if you are able to travel to a hotel, you might notice the cleanliness is not quite up to snuff.

For example on our most recent spring break trip, we were on a package that included all our meals in their oh-so-exclusive “club room.” You know the deal, the buffet special which is actually great for kids – now they have so many more food options for which to scrunch up their faces and say, “But that stuff looks icky, Mommy.” Yes, the club room & buffet were great for our pocketbooks, but not so great on the spotlessness factor. Being so overcrowded, the hotel had more guests than the wait staff could handle. So we would find ourselves famished at breakfast in front of a table not quite bussed to anybody’s liking – the leftover cereal and hardened bits of oatmeal still gracing our tile tabletop. And after several failed attempts to flag someone down with a wet dish towel, I did what any Mama Bear would do and finally took matters into my own hands, literally. I pulled out my trusty pack of on-the-go Clorox® Disinfecting Wipes and did the job myself. So while we were getting first dibs at the buffet on the ripest fruit and the untouched bagels, a bunch of other famished faces stared at us with envy.

But not for long.

A mom next to us, tired of staring at her crusty tabletop asked to borrow a wipe, and in no time flat, I suddenly became known as “The Wipes Lady” around the club room. (Did I mind? Are you kidding?! All my comedy credits aside, it became a source of pride to me!) And those wipes came in handy on just about every hard surface at the hotel. When you’re traveling, there’s not a spot that can’t benefit from a good healthy swipe: the light switches in the room, the TV remote, the list of filth where a million families precedes you goes on and on!

So be like me and become the most popular person on your next vacation. But, sorry. “The Wipes Lady” is a name that’s already taken! And I ask all of you out there in the blog-o-sphere...what would you name this spring break sticky situation? Perhaps it's fodder for a new Ick-tionary term!