Does anyone still do Spring Cleaning? I know I’m a little late to the party–seeing as spring ended long ago and summer is almost over. But, I was just wondering if this was still a “thing” we all do or is it just another something I feel compelled to do and then feel like a complete failure because I never seem to be able to get it done.
I got married in the mid 1990’s when Martha Stewart Living magazine was in it’s hay day.
I remember getting my copy and there was always a calendar called Martha’s Month full of things we should all be focusing on getting done: cleaning our gardening gloves and boots, polishing our silver(because everyone has silver) and, of course, making sure our closets and cabinets are properly organized with labels in place. It was an impossible and far reaching set of goals. Even the best of us faltered under Martha’s guidance and her pursuit of creating the perfect home.
I’ve realized, though, that most of us seem to have a need to keep order and cleanliness in our homes. When we built our home nearly 8 years ago–I made a commitment to God that I would do everything I could to make my home stay shiny and new. Clearly–I was insane at the time and I’m hoping God understands that I had no idea what I was saying. How could I have completely grasped just how relentlessly destructive and messy my 2 boys would be? Back when I made said deal–they were cute, tiny little things who couldn’t even reach to the counter tops. Oh the foolishness of me.
So, what’s the difference between spring (or fall) cleaning and regular every day cleaning–you may ask? For me–it’s just being a lot more thorough. I follow pretty simple daily and weekly cleaning lists I made many years ago. But, once or twice a year I try to go through my whole house top to bottom and clean EVERYTHING. And when I say everything–I mean every. tiny. little. thing. Even if it’s a stuck on glop of something that can no longer be removed–it gets cleaned and polished. My list includes things like:
- Scrubbing baseboards and wiping down walls.
- patching holes in walls, scrubbing off scuffs (and nerf bullet residue) with a magic eraser and touching up the paint.
- cleaning light fixtures (best to turn lights off while doing this–just a little something I learned while cleaning a hot light fixture with a damp cleaning cloth)
- vacuuming UNDERNEATH furniture and under cushions. (I’m pretty sure entire meals could be prepared from all the crumbs I have found in these places) (maybe I’ll write a cook book with recipes–“popcorn, m&m, and goldfish soufflé”)
- cleaning all my windows inside and out and the window sills (removing all the petrified bug corpses)
- cleaning under all my kitchen appliances (Yuck).
- trying to get the filmy grease that is perpetually stuck to my oven cleaned off and cleaning out the suspicious green slime growing in the refrigerator vegetable drawer (A fun guessing game of “what did this used to be?”is always fun to play).
- Scrubbing every inch of the bathrooms (I can’t even bring myself to look when I clean the floor behind the toilet). A pro tip I learned as a mom of boys–always flush the toilet BEFORE opening the lid…just trust me on this one.
- Damp dusting every surface and underneath all the stuff on the surfaces. I love swiffers, but have found they usually just swish the dust around (they should be called “swishers”)–using a damp dusting cloth removes the dust….for about 5 seconds.
I am slowly making my way around every room in our home to complete my Spring Cleaning as I watch the leaves turning announcing Fall’s arrival. If you see me outside washing windows as the first frost hits in a few weeks–you’ll know I’m getting close to completion. My goal is to finish before next spring hits.