[Today: another throwback post. I find it interesting when I read back my words some twenty years ago how entrenched I was in the role of mothering and domestic engineering. I loved it then – still love the mothering – but the spring cleaning has turned into year round cleaning. More manageable, less odious – not to mention I don’t have three little ruffians upending my efforts every waking hour anymore. Good times. And the gender roles aren’t nearly as strict now. Also: I don’t have much of a Martha Stewart consciousness anymore except to enjoy her friendship with Snoop Dog.]
Every year about this time I have an irrepressible urge to rid my house of all excess dirt, grime, recyclables and of course, any clothing that has mysteriously shrunk in size. As the old adage goes, in spring a man’s heart turns to baseball and a woman’s towards baseboards. Or more specifically, the chocolate milk that seeped under there when one of your children decided to demonstrate jumping jacks, forgetting he had a full glass in his hand.
I always know that the time has come by the state of affairs in my storage room. One look in there and you might think I had some sort of disease, the kind that the absence of many Styrofoam trays, paper towel tubes, milk carton caps and Pringles cans would preclude my normal functioning in life. A symptom of my ailment is my total inability to throw something away (or recycle it) before it has migrated to said storage room and has become part of a teetering tower that threatens to landslide into the hallway if you don’t open and close the door VERY quickly. Which makes retrieving the vacuum cleaner a problem. Which is why the kids have the vacuum cleaner in their toy room. They think it’s an alligator.
I like to think that it’s a frontier quality that I have honed, saving things beyond all reason. One never knows when Martha Stewart comes up with a way of making a “beautiful” giant topiary from several detergent bottles and hundreds of bread clips, which (of course) I have. But having three little boys in the house has foils all my aesthetic intentions. Whereas I envision a teeny tiny skyscraper from the medicine box I can’t throw away, my boys see a weapon of the grenade variety. Cardboard trays? Shields. Wrapping paper tubes? Swords. Which explains the strange ring-shaped bruises that they all sport on their tummies.
And so the second clue that it’s spring-cleaning time is when the playroom is littered with squashed boxes and tubes. The reason it has to be spring when you begin the Big Clean is so that you can send your kids outside for an indefinite amount of time. This tradition dates back to the beginning of history when cavewoman, at the sign of the first thaw, told her children to go play outside and not to come back until she called them. Although she didn’t have a Swiffer or a Dirt Devil, her cleanup was relatively easy, consisting merely of removing all the bones and rocks that had made their way into the cave over the winter and then sweeping it out with a stick that had some dried weeds attached to it.
Of course, all you really have to do is tell your family that you’re going to clean today and they will all miraculously disappear, including your husband. This also dates way back to ancient Scotland when Old MacDonald fled the house and his wife’s feather duster. Picking up a stick in a fit of male protest, he got in touch with his primitive side and knocked a stone flying into a gopher hole, thus inventing another timeless spring tradition.
And so spring-cleaning has also become synonymous for Mommy’s Alone Time. Which makes it a perfect time to forget about the impending avalanche in your storage room, kick back and tune your television to see what Martha’s up to. Or to the baseball season opener. Whatever it takes until the feeling passes.