Spring Cleaning

Spring Cleaning or the Annual Purge

Ah! Spring Cleaning- that time, once a year, when somehow our instincts kick in and compel us to purge from our lives all superfluous objects unnecessary to our existence. Depending on how committed of a pack rat we are, we can manage to ignore those natural urges, mentally rationalizing why we need these little bits of things that fill our drawers, our desks, our garages and attics.

However, no matter how good the reasons we present to ourselves, in a moment of weakness, our cleanly DNA will give a final command and we yield, whether in a small measure or great. In small measure, we may remove a few items of clothing from our drawers; something that doesn’t fit us, a sock we have lost the mate to, or the t-shirt that is covered in paint splotches from the time we obeyed another natural impulse and beautified something in our home or yard.

If small measures are all we are able to take, we can still applaud. We have appeased our internal urge to bring some order to our lives, even if it’s just in the sock drawer, and so we can go on peacefully. That is, until some other insane notion snags us and we find ourselves in the midst of a big renovation project or something of the like.

If, however, we fall completely under the power of our purging instinct, we have the dreaded likelihood that by the time we are through going through each drawer, cupboard, dresser, and closet, we will have good reason to call this episode of Spring Cleaning “The Great Exodus”.

I have always been rather a late person, though often I have legitimate excuses for those lenient enough to allow me them. Yes, I could have had my four children up at 5:30 to make sure we had the house tidy, breakfast eaten, been all dressed and waiting to leave the house with ample time for traffic conditions. But, if anyone knows how cheerful any kid is to be awoken at 5:30 and commanded to perform several tasks before departure, you will know why I woke them up at 7:30 instead and why we are five minutes late.

Therefore, it stands true to my own character that Spring Cleaning has in reality become Summer Cleaning. You may think that is actually better for now I have longer days with which to organize myself and the help of my progeny, since they are unoccupied with studies. You must realize, though, that I have had the voice of the Tidy-Up DNA ringing in my brain for the past several months, and had I yielded to it when it first began to whisper, I could have gotten by with cleaning out all the clothes that no longer fit the growing weeds I call my offspring and gotten away with it.

Sadly, I have been putting off the cleaning event, for very good reasons, mind you; I do keep a busy schedule. But my brain is not that lenient at accepting my own excuses. No, now I have a raging rant commanding me to get rid of everything in my home and move into a tent, just to simplify my life. In short, I am facing the Great Exodus.

Before you go ahead and say, ‘what’s wrong with getting rid of everything and living in a tent?’ I will tell you that I have done that very thing and there is nothing wrong with it. But a tent is not the ideal situation for a family of six and therefore I have to try and create order within the chaos contained by these walls.

I must take a side note for just a moment, and say that I am completely disgusted with the fact that chaos has returned to the drawers and closets I cleaned out so thoroughly just twelve months before. Didn’t I say at the beginning that this is an annual affliction?

Back to my point. Since I am compelled to do a deep cleaning, I realize I will need a certain number of days to complete that task. ‘Why is that?’ you may ask, ‘I only have a three bedroom house, it can’t take that long to go through it.’ No, it wouldn’t take that long, if I could only pause every single person in my entire family. I could go through their belongings, unfreezing each them one at a time, only long enough to try on a pair of pants to see if they are too short or ask them if they really play with the toy that was given to them five years ago. That would be an ideal way to get things done in very little time.

As you may have remember, while I only have a three bedroom house, I have four children and a few pets, who, while I am working on one room of the house, can be wreaking havoc on all the other parts of the house. Therefore, I must take periodic breaks from the purging of all superfluous items in our home, to come and restore order to any given area.

Fortunately, at the ages my children are now, I can restore order by simply issuing a few commands. “You, pick up all the wrappers lying around here, what have you been eating, anyway?”

“You, rinse these dishes and load them into the dishwasher, we’ll be eating with our fingers if you don’t!”

“You, pick up all the dirty clothes and put them in the hamper in the laundry room. IN the hamper, not on the floor in front of the hamper!”

“And you – put away these toys/markers/games that you left out. Remember, before you go on to the next thing, put the first thing away, that way there won’t be any messes like this!”

Having whirled in and shouted out orders with the efficiency of a drill sergeant, I return to my purging process in whatever room I am working on at the time, returning in ten minutes to peek and see if my darlings are obeying my directives. Half of the time, I have to re-issue my instructions, but half of the time I am pleasantly surprised to see movement and compliance, leaving me the freedom to return to my own work in a satisfied state of mind.

Once the drawers, closets, cupboards, nooks and crannies of my entire household have been gone through and organized, I am left with a giant pile in the garage. Every year, without fail, I marvel at the amount of things we are ready to get rid of. How did we accumulate all of these possessions? What were we thinking when we bought that?

Perhaps there are few items that we thought would be more useful than they actually were. There are things that we had high hopes for, but haven’t actually touched more than twice in ten years, so they can now be released to some other person who may find it more helpful than we did. There are the things that work fine, but have been replaced with something more in-style or more suited to our current whims. There are the clothes that the kids have outgrown, as well as the outfits that I wonder what I was thinking when I bought! How did I think I would be able to pull that look off? No, that little lapse in fashion judgment goes into the pile, to be gotten rid of with all the rest.

Now that the Great Exodus of Superfluous Items had become the Great Pile in the Garage, it’s time for the Annual Garage Sale which always follows the purging process. Somehow I know there are things in that pile which have no more use to me except to be sold to another person who may find a use for it themselves. ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure’ is one of my personal creeds. I have found many handy items in my own yard saling adventures, so I know others will as well.

Thus begins the sorting, arranging and price stickering process that can take several days, remember, that the size of the Pile is considerable. My husband always says to just put it out in the middle of the yard and let people dig through it, but I shudder at his comments. I know this is not a good marketing strategy if we want to clear out these useful but unwanted treasures, and so I organize the Pile. Dishes in this area, books on that table, toys in the bins, big stuff on that side of the lawn; it makes more sense that way. I’m sure all of our customers will appreciate it.

The day of the Garage Sale begins, I am up bright and early setting out the wares, and my husband puts up the signs. People flock in and many things leave our home to find places in someone else’s life. At the end of the Sale, everything remaining is boxed up and brought to Good Will. I sigh in relief, the house is clean, the garage is emptied, and we have money in our pockets.

What to do with all of our riches? Let’s go shopping! By now, it is Fall and the gathering and nesting instinct is upon us. After all, who knows what kinds of things we will need to keep us through the winter? So we must go out and buy it now, just in case, before we are caught without it. Besides, if we didn’t go out and buy something, what else would we have to clean next Spring? 

(c) 2012 Amy Bambilla. All Rights Reserved.