Who invented spring cleaning?

I love spring. Everything is new and fresh. The barren trees turn green. The pastures are dotted with beautiful wild flowers. The wheat begins to grow and wave in the endless wind blowing across them and I can watch as the little baby bunnies and birds are born and grow, making it impossible to grow a decent garden.

There are two things, however, that I hate about spring. Allergies and cleaning.

Who was the genius that came up with spring cleaning? Why can't we have winter cleaning? What better time to undertake a major cleaning job that when you can't get out of the house to do anything anyway?

As for allergies, why in the world do we do something that will stir up dirt during the worst season for allergies?

But I haven't bucked the system -- yet. I've held off on deep cleaning my house until the proper time.

Now that it's here, I've spent the last few days doing what needs to be done. Our spare bedroom now looks like a bedroom we use for storage instead of a storage room with a bed in it.

I found the laundry room floor yesterday and I found the pool table under all the laundry.

My next challenge will be cleaning out the cabinets, washing the walls, washing the windows and getting rid of everything we don't need.

For the last five years, Brad has been commenting on my shopping habits. It wasn't until I began cleaning that I realized he was right.

I've been packing away clothes that I haven't worn in a while. I've been packing up clothes that I've never worn. I have enough clothes packed up to cover the nude beaches of California and Tahiti.

As for shoes, I've found it a little more difficult to part with them. Especially the ones I haven't had on my feet since I tried them on in the store. I've found a good home for the shoes that have mates. I'm just not sure what I should do with the shoes that have lost their counterpart.

I've experienced the phenomenon of losing socks in the laundry. I usually give them a couple of weeks to show up and, if they don't, I simply throw away the single sock. But what do you do with a shoe whose partner has disappeared? It hardly seems right to discard them.

I have them stacked in a box in the bedroom that we use for storage. I figure if they don't show up by the time I finish my spring cleaning in December, I'll have a little ceremony and bury them a little further back in the closet -- just in case.