Does My Home Need a Spring Cleaning?
Yes, your home really does need a Spring Cleaning. It’s officially spring… The sun is shining, the trees are budding, and Pinterest is buzzing with pins that say things like, “55 Cleaning Hacks to Make Spring Cleaning More Productive and Fun!” and “The 30-Day Spring Cleaning Challenge,” not to mention free spring cleaning printable checklists galore.
All of which makes me sit back and contemplate: How did any of us function back in the dark ages before there was Pinterest to give us all these unrealistic ideals to aspire to in our daily lives? Not very well, evidently. I can remember being a young newlywed living in my first house, and visiting with my grandmother one weekend. In an attempt to make conversation, she asked me, “So, did you get your spring cleaning done yet?” And she said it so matter-of-factly, kind of like you might ask someone in December, “Have you finished your Christmas shopping?”
I remember being completely taken aback and flustered by the question. Spring cleaning? That’s a real thing that people do? Not just some quaint notion or cute saying from the past?
Thinking back even further, I do recall my mom spending a day every year taking down the curtains and washing them, while my dad went outside and washed all the windows from a precarious position atop an aluminum ladder. And I remember the smell of Ajax and Murphy’s Wood Soap emanating through the house from the deep cleaning they’d give the kitchen cabinets and the floor around that same time…
Voila! Apparently, THAT was “Spring Cleaning!” I just never thought about it that way. My parents always kept an immaculate house anyway, so I think I thought these were just some quirky things that they liked to do for fun—wash and iron drapes and scrub windows and cabinets.
It took a few years of filth and dust building up on my own window sills and inside my cabinets before I really understood the value of giving your home a deep cleaning once a year. However, I don’t know about you, but I get overwhelmed enough by the day-to-day responsibilities of running a household, like working, and picking up shoes and towels and coats and dog toys, and cooking, and washing dishes, and taking out trash, and doing laundry, etc. A checklist of 101 spring cleaning tasks, no matter how well organized and cute the graphic may be, only tends to make me feel stressed out and inadequate.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do for yourself and everyone around you is to call in a professional. Fortunately, Immaculate Clean is having a spring cleaning special: $50 off a One Time Deep Clean. This detailed cleaning includes cleaning the interior of the fridge and oven, vacuuming under family & living room couch cushions, hand wiping baseboards, window sills, fan blades, cabinet fronts, and more.
So, this year I’m making my own spring cleaning printable checklist, and it’s going to look something like this:
- Do all the usual daily chores
- Declutter a closet or two
- Stay off Pinterest