Kimra Traynor Herb

Side
Streets
by
Kimra Traynor Herb
IPS Features

Kimra learns house cleaning at the doctor’s office

I just spent the past three hours sitting in a doctor's office while waiting for my son to get into an exam. During that time, however, I did get a big ole dose of insight on "How To Spring Clean Your House." First of all, let me state that for the record, the only reason I read the article in the first place was extreme boredom. Boredom on the level that even an article about cleaning my house was a welcome respite from watching all the other people sit and stare at the floor- or- heaven forbid- at each other.

I hate sitting in doctor's waiting rooms, but since I have three children it seems I am mandated to do a lot of it. So, prepared to make the best of a tedious wait, I picked up the magazine entitled Metropolitan Home or You Can't Afford to Even Read This And Dream of Owning Such a Place So Why Are You Even Bothering? (as I liked to think of it.)
The first article I read showed how to decorate your bedroom on the "cheap". They illustrated this feat by showing two bedrooms, side by side, one fabulously luxe and the other just a shade dowdier. The "posh" bedroom ran just over $85,000 which included linens for the bed valued at about $6,000. (No, I am NOT making this up!) The "cheap" bedroom ran a mere $12,000 for quite simply a second best attempt at emulating the really good bedroom- and even I felt kind of let down by the attempt to recreate an obviously $85,000 room. And then I realized that they were talking about twelve thousand actual America dollars for the CHEAP room- and I turned the page.
That is when I found the article about "How To Spring Clean Your House." What the hey, I thought, this can't cost me twelve thousand big ones (as if I had it anyway) and decided to give the article a shot. After all, I wasn't going anywhere. After a few paragraphs, I should have quit reading. This kind of article was designed to make people like me feel really, really bad. According to the author (a self-proclaimed aficionado of cleanliness), one should never, ever expect to do a good spring cleaning in one day. OH NO! Perish the thought! One should not even expect to finish the task in a weekend. Spring cleaning, it seems, on the level that it SHOULD be done (and IS done by really good people everywhere) can take WEEKS of solid, non-stop scrubbing, fluffing, washing, and polishing. Eeeeek.
I am the kind of chick who feels quite drained when I take all the pictures off the top of the piano and give the old gal a good dusting. (Hey- I have a LOT of pictures). So imagine MY shock when I read that yearly spring cleaning should include such activities as taking the curtains down and washing or taking them to the cleaners!

Naturally, while the curtains are down, one is expected not only to vacuum out all the dead bugs from inside the window wells (they didn't specify this task but it is my own addition as I find they do tend to build up in there after a couple of years), but to WASH the windows squeaky clean.

They also suggested in the article that all pictures be taken off the walls, wiped clean, and then that the walls be sponged down with a mild cleanser! The WALLS! Furniture is to be moved; carpets to be cleaned, crown molding given a good wipe down with Murphy's Oil Soap, and hardwood is to be cleaned with the aforementioned with all furniture gone. By this point in the reading, I was drained just speculating the effort involved in such a massive cleaning, but the article continued.

All linens are to be cleaned in bedrooms, including dust ruffles and mattress pads. Comforters need to be taken to the cleaners, and (this part made me gasp in horror) beds should be moved and vacuumed underneath. Why not just ask me to pull a giant redwood up by its roots and transplant it across the country? Do these people understand how much STUFF has made its way under my bed?

What am I supposed to do with all of it? Especially when I don't really care to acknowledge it's existence, which is WHY IT IS STUFFED UNDER MY BED IN THE FIRST PLACE! I am pretty sure, after reading this, that no one, outside of my grandmother, has ever really done all of these things in an annual spring cleaning.

As for me, I plan on checking out those windowsills real soon to see if the bug build-up warrants a good vacuuming. And, if it does, well, I am comforted in the knowledge that a spring cleaning cannot be accomplished in one day or even in a weekend. So those bugs will be gone by October- November at the latest.