The tell-tale signs can be found on curbs across Naperville on successive weekday mornings. Bags and boxes, scraps and heaps, trash, tables, toys and whatever else has gone out with the weekly refuse. Tuesday morning, it was our turn.
It’s spring-cleaning season.
As soon as the weather starts to break, the temptation hits to purge the old and start anew. Like the rebirth represented by spring itself, our homes come alive with the cleansing – literal and figurative – of objects top to bottom. To some, not a surface goes unshined, unbrushed, unwaxed or otherwise un-whatevered. No less an authority than Martha Stewart herself offers a 12-step checklist for the really intensive cleaning in spring cleaning: Wiping walls and ceilings, resealing grout lines and washing window screens are just a few of the items on the domestic diva’s list of vernal must-do’s.
But spring cleaning is not just about scrubbing – it’s also the perfect time for some much-needed de-cluttering. Attics, basements, closets and spare bedrooms are just a few of the places stuff can gather if we let it. The things we don’t really need but can’t bear to part with at the time are stowed away, only to find we can’t wait to get rid of them once we rediscover them months or even years later.
At our house, it’s the chance to rid oneself of that nettlesome clutter that makes spring cleaning so satisfying. In what’s become a rite of the season, it seems we’ve been hauling to the curb more junk than I knew we had, and more than I thought we might possibly want to get rid of. That’s after having done the same last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.
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This year it started in the kids’ rooms, emptied top to bottom for a total reorganization, a fresh coat of paint and new beds. First for our daughter, her room slated for a makeover in the color of her choice as part of her 10th birthday present. And then for our boys, the room they share redone for the first time since the 12-year-old burst on the scene. Not for their birthdays, but simply because it was time.
Now, I won’t pretend for a second that any of this was my inspiration. As my wife will tell you, I’m rarely the source of such good ideas, and even less often the elbow grease behind bringing them to fruition. But without fail, I’m always there to tell her what another one of her great ideas she’d had, as was the case this time.
And so went bags of junk to the curb, gathered from bottoms of closets and under beds, making way for the new junk that will no doubt gather in its place over time. But for now, spring cleaning had performed its annual cleanse … in two rooms anyway.
Last spring it was our shed, nearly the size of one of those trendy “tiny houses,” home to any number of odd tools and lawn implements, old patio furniture and forgotten holiday decorations. Some of which still served a purpose, some didn’t. Some worked, and some hadn’t been touched in years.
Yet there they sat, including the two old string trimmers that gave up the ghost years ago but still somehow held faint hope of one day being brought back to life. Of course, that would never happen, those trimmers and much more junk amassed over a decade-plus was instead quickly ticketed for the curb.
Last year’s shed cleanout was an especially productive one – that space destined to be overtaken as a backyard oasis, making it home to a refrigerator, speakers and other outdoor party accoutrements in “The Beer Shed.” Amazing what you’re willing to part with in the name of making more of your precious square footage conducive to the consumption of adult beverages.
This spring, there’s still more to go. The garage is a likely target, along with the yard itself. Late winter’s first warm days saw the pitching of old lawn decorations and a worn plastic toy box, among other items, and just this weekend ushered out a tangled web of scrap metal items, including a bike, grill and other junk that should likely have been shown the door long ago.
I don’t know who does a better service at times like these, the garbage collectors who will take away nearly anything we Napervillians put to the curb (no hazardous materials, electronics, etc., but most anything else) – paid for by the taxes we pay for them to do so – or the metal salvagers, who will often beat them to the punch.
Two weeks ago it was leaky water heater, taken to the street in anticipation of trash collection two days later, but retrieved by scrappers before the garbage men got their chance. Like clockwork, the (re)cycle repeated itself this weekend with that bike and grill.
It feels good, tidying up a bit and clearing some room. It helps to get a jump on the season, turning our attention to raking out the flower beds, seeding those bare spots on the lawn and painting the deck.
Heck, might even get to resealing those grout lines.
Really, Martha? The grout lines?
Nah.
Rob Manker is a freelance writer who lives, works and parents in Naperville.
Twitter: @RobManker