Musings on seasonal cleaning

I finally realized why I don’t understand spring cleaning.  It’s not that I don’t think that one’s house needs a good cleaning on a yearly basis.  It’s not that I think my house is too clean to need to have a spring cleaning.  It’s not that I’m against all cleaning (although at certain times in my day, you might think so, based on the way my house looks). 

It’s because I don’t want to be doing a deep clean of my house in the spring. 

Maybe that sounds weird, particularly since spring cleaning is such a byword.  But in the spring, I want to be OUTSIDE!  I want to do yard work and gardening and plan new projects outside.  I want to come inside and announce to Michael that I’ve planned our new hardscaping and he should come out and see what I’m planning.  (Poor Michael.)  Things are bursting forth from the ground, and I either want to be tending them or pulling them out before they take over. 

I most emphatically DO NOT want to be chasing dust bunnies around or redoing the basement organization. 

Summer isn’t a time for cleaning, either.  Summer is a time to be outside as much as possible.  I don’t really even like to cook much in the summer, because it takes too much time inside.  My house gets a little here and a little there in the summer.

Fall, on the other hand, is a PERFECT time for me to clean.  Now that daylight savings time has ended, there are long evenings of darkness when rearranging and cleaning what’s around me is a natural thing to do.  And cooking and baking and trying new recipes and sewing and doing all the indoor things. 

Friday night Michael and I spent about an hour and a half in the basement, organizing and rearranging, getting rid of things and planning where everything will go.  Last night we did another two hours.  I had a great time!  Michael was probably surprised, because I seem to remember him suggesting something similar about three months ago.  And I seem to remember rejecting the idea in favor of something outside.  I think he took that to mean that I didn’t want to rearrange the basement.  That’s not the case.  I just don’t want to rearrange the basement in the summer. 

This small epiphany is going to be really helpful in my life.  I’m going to take advantage of this self-knowledge to plan when I’ll do serious cleaning!  I won’t even think of planning it in the spring any more, because I know that I’ll either do it and be grumpy or (much more likely) not do it and regret that my house isn’t cleaner…but not enough to actually spring clean in the spring. 

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to figure it out.  Happy Fall!