A Few Days Until Spring Hits

/ cagedunn

The Seasons Turn

Which means another round of spring-cleaning! Oh, what joy, what pleasure, what horrors await.

Joy, that the place gets a good cleanout. Out go the spider webs that took over the ceilings, hid along the edges of everything hung on the wall, drifted down from the light fittings like old man moss. (And no, I don’t kill the spiders. We’d have millions of silverfish without the spiders, so the spiders stay. They just have to hide their webs better. Like in the air-con vents.)

jumping spider up close and personal

Pleasure comes from seeing a bit of sparkle after a long, dull, wet (yes, we had wet stuff – very unusual) winter with lockdowns and internet blackouts and broken computers (yes, and the wrist, but I’m trying to ignore that for the moment).

a branch of cherry blossom

The horror comes from what lies hidden within all the dust-bunnies, the balls of fluff of unknown origins, the bodies of creatures small and not so small that scatter bits of gizzard and guff, wings and sparkly things, across the tops of bookcases, kitchen cupboards, wardrobes. And in the shoes, if they’re not covered properly.

And the dust!

I tell you true, not a word of a lie, that when I take the dust out to the compost bin, it’s about half a bucket from the bedroom – and I’m not going to measure the rest of it … can only imagine the laundry, the hallway, the front room that overlooks a busy road with lots of garden supply traffic.

But in the end, it’s done.

Except for the windows, the oven (those two are for winter solstice cleans, if the weather is suitable – the oven requires the house to be open to get rid of the stench of burnt offerings, the windows and shutters  need to be both open and closed at various stages of the clean), the pantry and cupboards – which I’ll put on the mid-summer cleaning schedule, and if we have the family get-together, it will be after they’ve all gone. I’m not doing it twice.

And if there’s anything else (like gutters and drains and downpipes and cleaning the solar panels) there are professionals (aka friends and family who owe a favour – I know where they’re hiding out, but with the sun making its stay longer each day they have to emerge sometime. I’ll be waiting).

If it were Autumn (Fall) here, I’d be stocking up the pantry with the staples, drying and jamming and grinding and stewing and preserving.

So, what are you doing when the seasons change?

15 thoughts on “A Few Days Until Spring Hits”

  1. I’m looking forward to not having to water my 60+ plants in pots and the various perennial beds. Good to hear you guys had a wet winter; hope you have few bush fires this coming summer. The British Columbia interior is still burning in spots and likely to continue for a while. We’re okay here on Vancouver Island (so far).
    My big winter project is to finish the current WIP. I was happily typing up the handwritten manuscript when I thought of a big improvement and had to rewrite about 4,000 words.
    You realize that arachnophobes are freaking out at that photo, don’t you?

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    • Poor arachnophobes! But spiders have their job to do and we haven’t had the silverfish our neighbours get!
      I hope the fires get under control (all of them, everywhere), but I fear our lush winter is a setting up a rich fuel source for the summer winds/heat.

      Wishing you well with the WIP (I understand the rewrite dilemma – always happens at or beyond about the half-way mark, doesn’t it?)

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    • I fully understand. I think windows are worse than oven-cleaning. Even when they’re all at ground level. And webs catch mozzies.
      I don’t remove the ones outside (unless they’re red-back spider webs), but there are some people who panic at the sight of a few large displays from the resident orb weavers – beautiful designs that cover a couple of metres!

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  3. You can keep the spider Cage. I don’t mind them outside, and find their webs intricate and spellbinding when decorated with morning dew. We don;t do things with the seasons, we just ‘do things’. Take care.

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  4. I’m fine with spiders sharing my home but I do draw the line when they abseil down in front of me while I’m eating my breakfast.
    Because we have a lot of ‘summer residents’ on our little island who insist on driving down our unpaved road to the boat ramp at speeds that wouldn’t look out of place on a racetrack, we end up being encased in dust for the summer, so, when the season ends we do a de-dusting from one end of the house to the other.

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    • Makes sense – I wouldn’t want to do it twice, but I do ‘cos we have the trucks with garden soil driving down our road. Lots of ’em. Spring and Autumn – de-dust the house to collect all the stuff they dumped on us for no cost, free, no obligation (except to sweep it off the walls, windows, doors, etc.

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  5. -giggles- I won’t be doing a spring clean, that’s for sure! I’m a firm believer in the need-to-know principle, or in the case of housework, need-to-do. 🙂
    As for you, please don’t damage your wrist before it’s fully healed! Seriously, life’s too short for spring cleaning. 😦

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