Is spring cleaning still a thing - or do we just work hard all year long now? | Opinion

Spring cleaning was a regular part of my upbringing, like hunting Morel mushrooms in the spring or licking a cold ice pop on a hot summer day. Believe me, it was not your run-of-the-mill dust and vacuum routine, but rather a full-blown decluttering, disinfecting, deodorizing operation — an almost holy event that came around every year just like Christmas and Easter (minus the gifts). And it was not optional. Neither was any family member exempt.

This annual undertaking was like a rite of passage for my mom. A passage to what or where, I’m not sure. Maybe it was the work that needed to be done in order to sit back and enjoy what came next: permission to lounge in the sun slathered in baby oil, or loll around with her kids at Iowa’s Lake Ahquabi during summer break. Without guilt. Or possibly a purification ceremony. A sweeping up after the dreariness of days on end without sunshine. A scrubbing of the snow-spattered windows, inside and out, to better see what was coming just around the corner. Whatever it was, her generation clung to it.

As obligatory as this cleansing commitment was to my mom’s generation, the tradition seems to have gone the way of rotary phones and 8-track tapes. Or has it faded away quietly like lick-and-stick postage stamps? Come to think of it, I have never read research data or viewed public opinion polls unveiling the cleaning practices of millennials and Generations X and Z. So is spring cleaning still a thing?

For years through early and middle adulthood, I kept the tradition alive, kicking and screaming all the way. Why? Because that was what I was supposed to do. Right? You’d think it would have been easy to say, “Enough already!” to the dreaded task. For goodness’ sake, it’s just going to get dirty again. But it wasn’t easy.

The things we learn from our parents through lived experiences are like osmosis. It is a gradual assimilation of ideas, knowledge and customs that seep into our pores and are filed in our brains. That is the stuff that makes us who we are. For a long time, I felt that if I ceased this yearly cleaning frenzy, I would be failing or not measuring up.

At the same time, all that work was killing me — wiping thick and sticky grease off the top of the refrigerator, hacking away at strawberry jam and spilled milk on the inside and vacuuming the lint and dried-up mouse skeleton from behind it. And the granddaddy of them all: spraying the oven with a can of noxious Easy-Off, putting on both gas mask and rubber gloves for protection from the fumes, and wading in so I could smear the sludge around and mop it up with a roll of paper towels.

Good for mental health?

I do not call any of that fun, nor do I claim it as fodder for family scrapbooks. Yet despite the backbreaking work, I must admit to an emotional high that is hard to explain. It was a beatific sense of calm and accomplishment. A television clip told me yesterday that spring cleaning was good for my mental health. On the other hand, the pressure I laid on myself to squeeze all this into an already-crowded life of soccer practice, dental and doctor appointments, piano lessons and birthday sleepovers was insane.

Nowadays with adult children of my own, I see that the custom as I knew it seems to be dead and gone. What is it that is so different today from when my mom and those like her pulled out all the cleaning stops?

For one thing, if we as parents did not continue the tradition, there is the answer. But if we look a little deeper, it becomes clear that times have changed drastically.

Residential air conditioning was not even on the radar until the 1950s, and it was not common in a lot of homes for another couple decades. Windows in the home were left open to provide a cool breeze for basic survival. And along with that breeze came dust from the mostly unpaved streets and roadways. Lots of dust. And pollen. And who knows what else.

In addition, it should be noted that the number of employed women nearly doubled during the 50 years between 1948 and 1998. Come to think of it, all the moms I knew from back then did not have outside jobs, giving them much more time to commit to a mammoth cleaning effort.

Speaking of time commitment, electric clothes washing machines were not invented until 1908, and did not become common in homes until the 1950s. Automatic dryers became widespread in the 1940s. No-frost refrigerators were more common in the 1960s. Dishwashers were still seen as luxury items until the 1970s. Wow — do we ever think about how exorbitantly household chores have changed in the past 60 years? In some ways, we have gained more time with the addition of these household miracles, but I am not sure if they have much of a bearing on deep cleaning.

A reset from winter

In truth, the reason behind the demise of spring cleaning could be that the generation of heavy-handed scourers and scrubbers have all passed on. And right along with that thought come a bit of sadness and a whole lot of memories, like clean sheets and curtains hanging on a homemade clothesline whipping in the wind, held in place with worn wooden clothes pins, furniture being pushed and pulled in various directions to give the rooms a fresh new look, watching my dad help my mom by washing the outside of the windows, swapping out holiday wreaths and welcome mats.

Sometimes my mom would let me skip school to sort and stack tiny tins of spices like little toy soldiers, or balance boxes of Jell-O and cans of peaches and pork and beans. It wasn’t work to me then. It was fun.

This past January, I noticed my daughter wiping down the slats on her window blinds. (In January, not April?) And I observed her last spring as she refurbished her backyard with various online deals, buying colorful new cushions, comfy hammocks and chair swings. To her, spring is like a new beginning and a reset. Changing over her closet from winter to spring breathes fresh life into her. But she admits to tackling some tasks when they need it, like window blinds or cleaning out the cupboards.

Likewise, my daughter-in-law has spent loads of springtime hours updating her outdated swimming pool area with gorgeous plants, potted flowers and fabulous furniture. She told me that spring cleaning is still a term she thinks about, but that it has turned into more of a spring cleaning checklist that may take months to complete. Maybe this is the new and improved version of spring cleaning.

No doubt, people still love to change up the furniture, shampoo the carpets, clear out the chaos and create order out of disorder — making it clean and fresh, smelling of Mr. Clean or Pine-Sol, whatever their preference. And they do it not only for themselves, but for the people who call it home.

Yep, spring cleaning is alive and well, even though folks may not limit it to two weeks in April, but rather tackle it one bite at a time all year long. Wait a minute. I think that is an oxymoron. What do you think? Should we still call it spring cleaning if we work through our list all year long?