Fall Cleaning: What The Hell Was I Thinking

So another one of the rites of my childhood is rearing its ugly head this week. Fall cleaning. 

Note the bottle is almost empty

I remember as a kid every spring and fall as soon as the leaves would begin to change colors, my mother would begin to tear the house apart, cleaning every wall, ceiling, cabinet, radiator, window and piece of furniture in the house. In a home without a dishwasher, every single glass, plate and pot would be washed, because god forbid, the humongous oval platter on the top shelf may need to be used in front of company and there might be dust on it...OMFG, what would we do then. Ok, she did not say omfg, but yeah, what would we do then? Well I would take it down and wash it, and not really give a shit because everyone of my friends probably had a dusty oval platter on the top shelf of their cabinet too. But I digress.

Anyway, the cleaning would progress on her internal schedule to line up to a week or so before Christmas and Easter, when fresh curtains would be up on the windows...signaling the official end of the sanitizing process.

I am not quite the cleaner my mother was.

I do have my moments when the instincts are unleashed, and I begin a week-long spurt where I am attached at the hip to my dear friend Mr. Clean. This is one of those weeks, and the project is the kitchen. And, as satisfying as it is to clean out some drawers and cabinets, it is exhausting and quite frankly overrated.

Now, as I hate to cook during the week, and do most of my cooking at the weekend house, my cabinet with dry goods and that kind of stuff will often contain outdated items. It is such fun to look at some of the cake mixes and pastas to see just how long it has been since I last cleaned in there. Thankfully, today was garbage pick-up...hope those boys didn't pull anything picking up that bag.

I have four more cabinets, two windows, the stove, the refrigerator and a partridge in a pear tree left to do. My enthusiasm is waning, and we are only into the first week of fall. This does not bode well for cleaning the rest of the house.

Over the years my mother learned the error of her cleaning ways. She actually said to me one day, "What the hell were we thinking back then?" She and I have come up with a new mantra for the little bit of cleaning we now do.

"It's better than it was."
Not quite Hemingway, but then I bet he never washed windows.

.