From the Vault: Spring Cleaning
The earliest whispers of spring have arrived in southern California. Some mornings dawn gray and stormy but these are rare and the storms never last the day; in this climate, sunshine is never really far away. It peeks through the clouds as they roll in from the Pacific and rise over the Hollywood Hills. Morning and evening are surprisingly chill, but golden mid-day is warm enough to open the windows to admit that most fundamental of cleaning supplies: a fresh breeze. Our breezes are scented with eucalyptus, lemon, salt spray, and perhaps that is whttp://urbanhomeblog.blogspot.com/p/lists-guides-and-downloads.htmlhy these fragrances so often find their way into over-the-counter cleaning products.
On balconies all along the courtyard, evidence of the spring cleaning bug appears. Rugs hang over railings, and through open glass doors, bustles of satisfying activity are evident: mopping the floors and vacuuming the carpets, washing the linens and turning the mattresses, dusting the bookshelves and cleaning the collections. As homekeepers have since our species first sought shelter, these urban homekeepers are responding to the deep rhythm of the seasons by reading their homes for spring growth just as the Earth does the same Herself.
Spring cleaning was one of the earliest areas of content I developed for Urban Home Blog, and that’s appropriate, because spring cleaning is one of my earliest memories. As I wrote in the previous column and have written in innumerable columns prior, spring cleaning was a weeklong occurrence on my grandmother’s Oklahoma homestead. It was a true family affair, as anyone who couldn’t get out of it found themselves drafted into action: hanging hooked rugs and chenille bedspreads from the clothesline and then beating them with a switch of birch, oiling down oaken tables and chairs with heavy-scented furniture polish, washing rafts of canning jars in tubs of hot soapy water.
Spring cleaning at Grandma’s was as reflective of its time and place as a jar of molasses, but I have never found that spring cleaning is only a country practice. In Astoria and Hollywood, the stores set out the cleaning supplies just after Valentine’s Day, and the brooms and buckets find their way into pushcarts and car trunks respectively. At Urban Home Blog, two popular guides are those to cleaning products and chemicals in the home. These pair well with the Urban Home Guide to Spring Cleaning, my first printable download, and to this day one of the most popular searched and saved columns on the blog.
Spring cleaning doesn’t stop with the basics. Both spring cleaning and its complimentary practice in autumn are born of the rhythms of nature, but nature can encroach in more practical if no less poetic ways. I often write about the seasons and the holidays that celebrate them. But as storm season approaches, Urban Home has basic instructions for weatherproofing the windows – even the guide for setting up your home tool kit. But I must admit that, in the homekeeping area, one of my favorite and – thank you -- heavily searched and saved columns is the one for learning about and managing household mold and mildew.
Spring cleaning is the essence of homekeeping, and is to a significant degree the reason I write Urban Home Blog. Maintaining our homes is both an immediate and ongoing responsibility. The tasks arrive daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, as-needed and ongoing, and it would be enough if they helped us maintain a healthy, happy environment where living happens. But cleaning does so much more: cleaning connects us with our home. When we perform cleaning and upkeep, the gift of shelter is balanced with the obligation of maintenance and a living environment is the result. Taking care of our home respects our fundamental need for shelter, from the trees and caves that first took us indoors to whatever, and wherever, our home today.
On balconies all along the courtyard, evidence of the spring cleaning bug appears. Rugs hang over railings, and through open glass doors, bustles of satisfying activity are evident: mopping the floors and vacuuming the carpets, washing the linens and turning the mattresses, dusting the bookshelves and cleaning the collections. As homekeepers have since our species first sought shelter, these urban homekeepers are responding to the deep rhythm of the seasons by reading their homes for spring growth just as the Earth does the same Herself.
Spring cleaning was one of the earliest areas of content I developed for Urban Home Blog, and that’s appropriate, because spring cleaning is one of my earliest memories. As I wrote in the previous column and have written in innumerable columns prior, spring cleaning was a weeklong occurrence on my grandmother’s Oklahoma homestead. It was a true family affair, as anyone who couldn’t get out of it found themselves drafted into action: hanging hooked rugs and chenille bedspreads from the clothesline and then beating them with a switch of birch, oiling down oaken tables and chairs with heavy-scented furniture polish, washing rafts of canning jars in tubs of hot soapy water.
Spring cleaning at Grandma’s was as reflective of its time and place as a jar of molasses, but I have never found that spring cleaning is only a country practice. In Astoria and Hollywood, the stores set out the cleaning supplies just after Valentine’s Day, and the brooms and buckets find their way into pushcarts and car trunks respectively. At Urban Home Blog, two popular guides are those to cleaning products and chemicals in the home. These pair well with the Urban Home Guide to Spring Cleaning, my first printable download, and to this day one of the most popular searched and saved columns on the blog.
Spring cleaning doesn’t stop with the basics. Both spring cleaning and its complimentary practice in autumn are born of the rhythms of nature, but nature can encroach in more practical if no less poetic ways. I often write about the seasons and the holidays that celebrate them. But as storm season approaches, Urban Home has basic instructions for weatherproofing the windows – even the guide for setting up your home tool kit. But I must admit that, in the homekeeping area, one of my favorite and – thank you -- heavily searched and saved columns is the one for learning about and managing household mold and mildew.
Spring cleaning is the essence of homekeeping, and is to a significant degree the reason I write Urban Home Blog. Maintaining our homes is both an immediate and ongoing responsibility. The tasks arrive daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, as-needed and ongoing, and it would be enough if they helped us maintain a healthy, happy environment where living happens. But cleaning does so much more: cleaning connects us with our home. When we perform cleaning and upkeep, the gift of shelter is balanced with the obligation of maintenance and a living environment is the result. Taking care of our home respects our fundamental need for shelter, from the trees and caves that first took us indoors to whatever, and wherever, our home today.
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