It occurred to me the other day that we are officially into
summer. Spring is gone. Kaput. And you know what that means. It is
SO too late to do my spring house cleaning.
It occurred to me the other day that we are officially into summer. Spring is gone. Kaput. And you know what that means. It is SO too late to do my spring house cleaning.
Yes, I had some great excuses this spring. In fact, this was a stellar year for excuses for not having accomplished my spring-cleaning tasks. For starters, we welcomed a new granddaughter in April. And you know that anybody from Club Grandmother-dom needs to spend lots of time holding new babies. Lots. You know, just to get the bonding process going and all.
Then we learned that Daughter No. 2 and her hubby are expecting their first child, and OK, technically it’s not until late December, but still. When your grown-up child announces she is giving birth to the next generation of your offspring, it is a Big Deal. There are all sorts of matters that must be discussed in great depth such as will the new baby be a boy or girl, top choices in baby names this week, attractive nursery decor, official Do-Not-Eat-When-Pregnant foods and so on until you barely have a minute to catch up on your blogging, let alone spring clean the house.
Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I don’t enjoy spring-cleaning. Well, that’s how little you know. As a matter of fact I’d put spring-cleaning right up there at the top of the fun list, just below neutering livestock. This circumstance is due to the unfortunate fact that women of my generation had mothers who made us help with spring-cleaning every year that we lived at home, and to this day we shudder remembering the looks of disapproval our mothers flung our way if our efforts didn’t meet the white glove test.
So when we daughters of the spring-cleaning mothers moved out and made our own nests, we carried that inbred ritual of spring along with us. Sometimes. Because back in my single days, I roomed with a lot of really messy girls.
Yes, as shocking as I know this is, not all of us girls get our kicks from scouring the bathtub. Sure, we like the house to be clean, we just wish the house could sort of stay that way by itself. Or if those who cohabit the house with us could sometimes pull on a pair of rubber gloves and have at it right alongside us.
Way back when I met my spouse, I made quite an impression on him. No, not with my intelligence or that he thought I was any great beauty or the world’s best cook or anything like that. Nope – he liked that I had a clean apartment. And OK, that was sort of scary. Because one thing it probably makes sense to do is marry someone of the approximate same notions of what it means to maintain a clean abode.
Diverse opinions of cleaning the house can cause some tension in the first years of marriage. Suppose he came from a home where his mother found spring-cleaning not just a habit but also her true calling. And maybe you came from that kind of home, too, but once out on your own, things got a little willy-nilly in the spring-cleaning department. That’s when you learned the art of cleaning your house in the manner I fondly recall as “winging-it” cleaning.
This cleaning technique is accomplished when you see hubby’s vehicle making its way into the driveway after work – assuming, of course, you are a “stay-at-home” wife and mom, which there are, admittedly, a lot fewer of these days. So when said vehicle turns into the driveway, you spring into action. Before he enters the house, children’s playthings are tossed into a toy chest, laundry is heaved into a closet, crumbs are whisked off the counters and you hurriedly dab a little pine-scented cleaner behind each ear. But that’s just me.
Yet now that spring is officially behind us, big cleaning projects will have to wait as we busy ourselves with poring over travel brochures and making dream vacation plans such as devising the shortest distance to the beach because gasoline is $97.46 per gallon; or hosting lavish backyard barbecues where we occasionally set the neighbors fence on fire; or arranging exotic fly fishing expeditions to regions where torrential rainstorms crop up in a nano-second, forcing you to lug your fishing gear out of the water and cram yourself (still wearing your attractive rubber waders) into the nearest hollow log. No, we’re way too busy with summer amusements to even consider spring-cleaning.
So I’ll postpone my spring-cleaning until fall. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Or maybe next spring. Umhmmm … spring. Of next year. Or the year after for sure. Anyway, I’ll think about it and report back to you. Yep. You betcha!
