Time for spring cleaning ... maybe

With spring's arrival this week, many homeowners are faced with that annual task: Spring cleaning.

You open the windows to let in the fresh air and realize you haven't cleaned the windows since the previous spring season. You dig out the baseball balls and gloves and notice the trail of dust you've cleared on the floor in front of the closet.

While homeowners today may not tackle spring cleaning with the same gusto of those a generation or two ago, spring is still the perfect time to embark upon those jobs you've been putting off since…well, last spring.

For example,

* Now is the perfect time to put the gloves and winter coats into hibernation for the next seven or eight months. That's what I love about the change of seasons, the putting away and getting out of winter clothes. Those poor people in temperate climates never get to experience the joys of seasonal clothes.

Next fall, you'll dig out your winter clothes and they'll seem almost new again. And to make things even better, you may find that $10 bill you swore you had the previous March.

* Now is the perfect time to gather up all those plastic grocery/ shopping/ garbage bags for another use or recycling.

Yes, the bags are very useful around the house in the vehicle, holding everything from dirty clothes to wet paint brushes. But the number of bags needed should stay in the double digits, instead of growing into the hundreds.

(As they pile up in my laundry room, I've determined these bags must be multiplying on their own, rather than admitting to my excessive shopping habits.)

* Now is the perfect time to clean the windows and I say that just because it's lighter later into the night, highlighting the smudges and dirt streaks, especially on westward facing windows.

Of course, this will only happen if you're one of those people who actually clean your windows. I, on the hand, have strict standards before I resort to cleaning my windows.

For starters, the windows are still acceptable if I can still catch a glimpse of the outside world through the hand-prints. This is solution is not as simple as it sounds.

One look at my all-glass kitchen door reveals a bottom half covered in little hand-prints, dog slobber and kitty paw-prints.

Yet, the top half of the door is still gleaming and shining from the last time I scrubbed the glass. It's a dilemma and whether to wash the door and isn't usually resolved until I happen to pass through the kitchen with window washing fluid in hand on the way to a different slime-covered window or mirror.

* Now is the perfect time to clean out the refrigerator, a job many people dread just because they are scared of what might attack them from the depths of the bottom shelf.

This job takes on added importance precisely because of spring's rising temperatures. If power were to be knocked about because of a spring storm, you no longer have the option of setting everything outside in cold temperatures to preserve the food. Combine questionable leftovers hanging out in your fridge and it could be a disaster in the making.

While I previously reserved an entire afternoon to cleaning out the entire fridge, shelf by shelf, drawer by drawer, I now attempt to clean it on an as-needed basis.

The milk jug won't budge? It's time to clean the door shelf.

Are there more rotten pieces of fruit than edible produce? It's time to clean the fruit drawer.

Were you too lazy to find the lid to the bowl with the soup and it's now covering the bottom three shelves? Plan on an entire afternoon bonding with your fridge.

 

Of course, you could take an entirely different route. Throw open the doors and the windows, let the sunshine and wind do their magic. And head outside yourself.

If you don't get to the cleaning this spring, there's always another spring in just another year.

 

-- Ronda Graff  does a little happy dance if her kitchen door stays hand-print free for more than five minutes. It's happened. Twice.