SPRING CLEANING

I wrote this little essay for the April 2006 issue of the Nichols Family Newsletter.  But, I  have edited it here so it is for all readers...not just the Nichols Kids.  Even though I am even worse about regular housecleaning now at age 75 than I was 15 years ago (let's face it, I pretty much gave up the quest to have every part of the house clean all at the same time), I still love looking at what I have persevered to clean.  And I clearly can recall the memories of seasonal housecleaning with my mother.  They still make me shudder!

•    makes me feel weak at the mention of it
•    brings back memories of a lot of hard work
•    when finished gives a great deal of satisfaction

 

I used to hate coming home from school and seeing all the house plants on the kitchen table or in the bathtub.  I knew we were in for a housecleaning session that was going to be major.  My mother came from the old school where everything was cleared out when good weather came, and the house cleaned from top to bottom.  That included washing walls and ceilings (leftover from the days when coal burning furnaces left dark soot); taking down all the curtains, washing them, stretching them on the wooden frames called “curtain stretchers”, and re-hanging them after we had washed the windows; removing all books from the bookcases and dusting each one separately; cleaning cupboards by washing ALL the dishes (by hand, remember there were no dishwashers when I was young); cleaning personal drawers and closets by designating which clothes could be “handed down” and which underwear was beyond anything but the rag bag.  From the junk drawer in the kitchen we tossed a year’s accumulation of rubber bands, pencils, and stray screws plus anything else that had landed there because we didn’t know what to do with it.  Lastly, we took up all the carpets (we didn’t have wall to wall carpeting then) and the wooden floors were mopped, polished, and buffed before replacing the rugs which had been beat outside to remove the dust and dirt. Along the way we cleaned light fixtures, kitchen appliances, polished the furniture, and waxed the kitchen floor.  Wheeeeeeeew!!

 When all my sisters were still pretty much at home, I guess it wasn’t such a bad job.  “Many hands make light work.”  But by the time I was 10 years old, I was basically an only child.  A lot of that crappy work fell to me as my mother’s helper.  Basically, I was a lazy child anyway.  My mother had to beg, plead, wheedle, and coax me to get with the program.  Procrastinating only made it that much harder, she would remind me.  She was right.

 I did like the feeling of accomplishment when we were FINALLY finished—several days later.  It was such a pleasure to look around the rooms and see things shiny and clean.  We usually re-arranged the furniture, too, so it seemed like all was new as well as clean.  Everything sparkled through windows that were spotless and let in the bright sunshine after the grime of winter had clouded them over.  And there was definitely a clean smell that accompanied it all.

 One year when we were cleaning the front rooms (living and dining rooms) my mother sent me into the kitchen to put some potatoes on the stove to boil for supper.  Later as we were putting the finishing touches to those two rooms, we looked at each other and remarked that the room seemed hazy and dark.  By then there was also the distinct smell of something burning.  We dismissed it as one of the neighbors burning some trash outside.

 When we went into the kitchen, however, we discovered that the boiled potatoes we were supposed to have for supper were actually “roasted” potatoes.  I had put them into a very thin aluminum pan (not the regular one my mother usually used—for whatever reason I didn't, I don't know now). The water had boiled dry because I never turned the heat down and covered the pan with a lid after the water came to a boil.  So, the glowing coil of the electric stove had burned right through the aluminum and kept on cooking those potatoes until they were charred lumps.   It was a miracle they didn’t burst into flames and catch the kitchen on fire!

Well, you can imagine what happened after that.  The cleaning began all over again!  We had to remove the dark soot and smoke from the walls, ceiling, furniture—everything.  If I hated housecleaning the first time around, you can be sure I REALLY hated it the second time.

As I matured, thankfully, I saw that I had better change my ways about procrastinating the aspect of housework, or I would be buried.  So, to overcome my laziness, I had to establish routines that became compulsive or else I would just end up doing nothing all day long.  Now that I am past 60, I seem to have gone full circle.  I am pretty lazy again about house work, and procrastinate doing even the simplest jobs.  Every now and then I get motivated to dust or scrub the bathrooms, and usually end up doing a lot more because I like looking at the house when it is “pristine”.  This is when I really enjoy coming home from work-work.  As I open the door and see everything in its place without a layer of dust, etc., there is great satisfaction in my efforts and a feeling of connectedness to my home.  Truman Capote said it this way,   "If you sweep a house, and tend its fires and fill its stove, and there is love in you all the years you are doing this, then you and that house are married.  That house is yours.”   

I agree!

Spring cleaning is WORK!  It’s hard WORK!  But having a clean house is really worth the effort it takes to make the family feel at peace with their surroundings. 

I still believe that is true in 2021.  It's all about attitude toward the job.  Only now I have the option of stringing it out a little bit at a time so Spring cleaning is not so exhausting.

Or, am I just kidding myself?  HAHAHA!

THANK YOU, MOM....

 

A few years ago, more than likely when I was out walking while on a layover for my work as a flight attendant with United Airlines, I purchased a small hardback volume titled, THANK YOU, MOM by Gregory E. Lang.  And I’m pretty sure I probably purchased it from a bargain table at a bookstore, as I would never have paid the $11.95 price embedded right into the cover of the book.  But the book was short.  An easy read. The pithy little statements of thanks—all preceded with the same “Thank you, Mom”—reflected what Mr. Lang wrote in the introduction of this little tome. 

He said, among other things, that as the years have gone by, he has increasingly begun to realize that the opportunities and support his mother gave to him made it so he could have the fulfilling life he has now.  He confessed that even though he “now recognize[s] the countless things” his mother did for him, he did not often show appreciation for all the things she did at the time.  Hence, the reason he decided to write this book.  Thankfully, he wrote in the introduction, that even though it was late, his mother was still alive so he could tell her—and have no regrets later that he never did.

This kind of stuff really resonates with me.  So, while I was reading the book, I began to think of some of the things my mother taught me and gave to me that I am pretty sure I didn’t express any thanks to her before her death in 1984.

At the time I discovered this little book, I was publishing a monthly newsletter for my children with articles about their growing up years and some insight into my own history now and then with little blips about personal experiences.  Over the previous few months, I had included some of my mother’s journal entries (all on little scraps of paper instead of written in the bound journals with empty pages which were in the same box).  My kids liked that and wanted more. This surprising book was a prompt to share with my children some of the wonderful legacy my mother left to me through her constant care.

My little adventure expressing a posthumous thank you to my mother lasted several months from the February 2012 through the December 2012 issues of The Nichols Family News.  Not that this was an exhaustive list.  It was just some of the things which my mother had taught me that I didn’t have to think too long and hard about.  They had merely become an ingrained part of my life experiences.

“Thank you, Mom, for keeping a youthful spirit; it made you fun to be around and made your appearance and demeanor youthful, too.”

 Here’s another one with explanation so you can understand what my mother meant as “inequality”:

Thank you, Mom, for teaching me that not everything is created equal.  Even if something has the same utility, it doesn’t necessarily mean that item is interchangeable with a similar piece.  You taught me that it was important to pair the job at hand with the appropriate items.  Not only for facility of use, but also to make for pleasing the eye. (Examples: small pan for small cooking on the small burner. Serving spoons for food at the table instead of the wooden spoon used to stir the pot on the stove.  Or NOT to sit down at the table in June and have a red satin Christmas cloth, layered with pink and white quilted Easter placements and brown dishes.  NO! NO! NO! to that kind of combo!  Just because we needed a cloth and some dishes on the table, that didn’t mean to use the first thing that came out of the cupboard!)

There were other thank you sentiments, too, which I included in those newsletter articles..

… for preparing me to leave home.

… for your example of remembering others on their special occasions with a small gift.

…for being someone I could look up to.

…for pushing me to do the things I didn’t want to do but needed to do.

…for taking the time to play with me and have fun together.

…for teaching me there CAN be too much of a good thing.

…for teaching me about frugality.

…for teaching me about hospitality.

…for teaching me about the “Spirit of Christmas” in our yearly celebration of Christ’s birth.”

What a wealth my mother bestowed upon me!

So, for this Mother's Day 37 years after she died...

THANK YOU, MOM!