TheBanyanTree: Spring Cleaning

[Margaret R. Kramer]

The thermometer has been staying above freezing.  The snow is gone.  I can
actually feel the warmth of the sun’s rays as I walk coatless outside.  I
think it’s safe to say spring is here in Minnesota.

And the coming of spring sharpens my eyes and I begin to see all kinds of
projects that need to be done around the house.

The garage needs to be cleaned out.  The woodpecker holes need to be filled.
Our major project this year will be the driveway that needs to be redone.
The leaves need to be raked.  I need to buy mulch and fresh dirt for
gardens.  It will soon be time to plant.

The inside of the house is crying out for a spring cleaning.  More light in
the house means I can see more dust and cobwebs.  I hate cleaning, but I
like a clean house.  And Ray came up with a good solution . . .

I grew up in a house where dust and dirt did not dare enter.  My grandmother
lived with us and between her and my mother, our house was always spotless.
But they spent hours keeping it that way.  They vacuumed and dusted three
times a week.  They did laundry every day.  Dishes were washed the minute
they got dirty.

Of course, there are advantages in growing up in such order, but my mother
would go ballistic if anything was out of place or if a small piece of dirt
managed to worm its way into the house.  She died of a heart attack at the
age of 52, so I don’t think having a perfectly clean house and then
obsessing about it was exactly healthy for her.

I work full time and I don’t have a grandmother living with me, so I hate
the time I spend cleaning.  It seems to me to be such a fruitless exercise,
scrubbing and dusting, and then a couple of weeks later, I have to do it all
over again.  My weekends are as precious to me as the most exquisite
diamond, and I resent using such a big chunk of a Saturday to clean house.

Ray helps me clean.  We’ve split up the house and that makes this awful
chore go a lot better.  He vacuums and dusts and I scrub down the kitchen
and bathrooms.  But neither of us want to clean the oven or wash out the
refrigerator.  We don’t move the furniture to get at the dust bunnies
lurking behind the couch.  We have two dogs and two cats and flying hair is
always a battle we lose.

Ray and I do like order, however.  Our mail doesn’t pile up.  The dishes are
washed and put away.  The laundry is done once a week.  Our clutter is kept
to a minimum, except for the big basket on the dining room table which is a
receptacle for various papers that seem important at the time we put them in
there.  I always know it’s out of control when I see Ray begin to go through
it and start throwing those “important” papers out.

Every time Ray saw a housecleaning service ad on TV, he mentioned it to me.
I blew it off, because deep down inside, I feel like I’m responsible for the
house being clean and being the woman I am, I have to do it myself.  If my
house doesn’t get clean, well, it’s my fault, and I have to do better.

But I realized Ray doesn’t like giving up his Saturdays to clean either.
And he isn’t the kind of man who can sit and watch TV while I frantically
run around the house tracking down errant cobwebs.

So I called the service.  They came out and looked over the house.  They
gave me a price.  I set up a schedule.  They’ll come in on Monday and do a
thorough cleaning and after that, they’ll be here every other Monday.

A weight was lifted from my shoulders.  We won’t have to spend this Saturday
cleaning to get ready for Easter.  I can get outside and bask in the
sunshine while I rake leaves (which is a lot more fun for me than cleaning
the house).  Ray can do what he wants to do, too.

I began to imagine long hot summer weekends at the beach rather than in the
house with a dust rag in my hand.

Life is good.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at earthlink.net

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We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
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~Native American Proverb