I was throwing out all my hoarded-up paper and assorted and sundry trash, trying to get myself organized, and vacuuming behind those tough-to-move pieces of furniture the other day when something occurred to me:
Why do we do SPRING cleaning?
I’m not saying we shouldn’t clean in the spring. Truth be told, I think we ought to be cleaning at least a little bit every single day, not just once a YEAR! ????
What I’m asking is: Wouldn’t FALL cleaning make more sense?
Hear me out.
We have this cultural compulsion when the flowers bloom and the air gets warmer to open the windows and sweep out the dust to celebrate the change in the weather.
And that’s fantastic.
But wouldn’t it logically make more sense to do all that cleaning and airing and scrubbing in the autumn? You know, right before we shut ourselves up in our airtight houses, surrounded by all our dust and filth?
So, join me, won’t you, in praise of FALL cleaning. If you’re only planning to scrape the accumulated mud off your floor and the egg off your frying pan once a year, you might as well do it in October instead of right now. At least maybe the scent of spring tulips and hydrangeas drifting in from outside will mask your stench and let you skip the spring cleaning.
