My mother always made a big deal about spring cleaning, even though the house was always kept neat and clean, thanks to my sister and me. Every Saturday, the two of us cleaned the house — she’d clean the downstairs and back porch; my job was the upstairs and front porch. And it had to be thorough — no dustmop or wet mop on the floors — we had to dust the wood floors on our hands and knees, and we also cleaned the linoleum floors on our knees with a bucket, rag, scrubbing brush, and Fels Naptha soap. I was the only kid at school who had what was called ”housemaid’s knees.” Truly, they would become swollen. Eventually, my mother bought rubber mats to put under our knees.
But back to spring cleaning. The mattresses were taken off the beds, taken outside and beat to get rid of the dust (and mites, I’m sure, but we weren’t aware of them). Then we would clean the coil springs on the beds with a cloth. These procedures changed when we got an Electrolux vacuum cleaner. Those were the days when some door-to-door salesmen were welcomed into our homes – the Fuller Brush, Electrolux, and Encyclopedia Britannica salesmen, for example. When he was a teen, my husband bought a set of encyclopedias from a door-to-door salesman, getting one volume at a time, paying a dime a week. Our neighbor bought one of those new-fangled Electrolux vacuum cleaners and after she showed my parents all the marvelous things it could do, they purchased one. With its extendable hose, we could use our new Electrolux to vacuum the mattresses and springs. Obviously, these were the days before the springs were enclosed.
The carpets were cleaned with some mixture of soapy water with vinegar, I think. If they weren’t considered dirty enough to require this method, the smaller ones were taken outside, hung, and beaten. The wood floors around the edge of the carpets and the wooden furniture were cleaned with soap and water and given a coat of wax, using paste wax or Simonize (which every household had in the garage to use on the car to keep its finish looking like new). Then came the hard part: buffing the wood until it shined. Sidebar: Our living room carpet had fringe around the edges, which created a challenge when using an upright vacuum cleaner, because the fringe would get caught in its roller. When this happened, the machine would be turned off so that the fringe could be carefully untangled from the roller. I seem to remember some bald spots in the fringe because of these instances. After the carpet was vacuumed, it was my responsibility to straighten the fringe, a job that was given to me when I was a toddler. I loved that I was helping to clean the house. Little did I know!
But I digress – back to spring cleaning. Dresser scarves were laundered, starched, and ironed. Lace curtains were laundered and then put onto a curtain stretcher, which was a wooden frame with tiny nails with the points sticking up, placed close together all around the edge of the frame. The frame could be adjusted to fit various sizes of curtains. The edges of the curtains were meticulously stuck onto the tiny nails, and painstakingly removed from the nails after the curtains were dry.
We went through closets and removed clothes that no longer fit (why this was a part of spring cleaning baffles me). My sister’s clothes were handed down to me, which is why my clothes were never the latest fashion. My outgrown clothes were given to charity or to my young friend, who still reminds me how much she loved the pink organdy dress with ribbon trim that my mother had made for me, which she inherited.
Spring cleaning was considered “women’s work,” at least in our household, where my father was the only male among three females. However, there was one job reserved for my father: window washing. I don’t mean that he washed all the windows by himself. What I mean is that he was in charge of the job and did the majority of the work. The downstairs windows were easy enough to clean, inside and out. The way we’d help was that Daddy would be outside the window and one of us would be inside, washing together, so that no spot was missed. The upstairs windows were the challenge. I remember seeing my father sitting on the windowsill with his feet dangling inside and his upper body outside, making it possible for him to reach places he couldn’t get to otherwise. Now this was a job I eagerly asked to do. I would have loved to sit on the windowsill, half in and half out, but my parents, who obviously knew me better than I knew myself, turned down my request. When I try to recreate the scene in my mind, I still think I would have done a good job, although I can’t figure out how my dad reached every section of each upstairs window – but he did!
Things were removed from cupboards, which were cleaned and then the objects were put back. In going through the kitchen cupboards, Mother would have us deep clean the pots and pans. This was another job that I couldn’t understand. Why not just clean them thoroughly each time they were used? I can visualize my mother scorching a pan and scrubbing it a bit and then telling herself, “That’s good enough for now; we’ll take care of it when we do our spring cleaning.” One year I was given the muffin tin to clean. It was in terrible condition, with caked-on grime. There was no way I was going to spend my time on this distasteful project. I surreptitiously discarded the muffin tin. Then I took part of my meager allowance and bought a new one, which I sneaked back into the cupboard. Since this was a baking item that was seldom used, I never knew when my mother discovered the substitution. I wonder whether she was grateful for the new muffin tin or upset with me for throwing away a “perfectly good pan that just needed some elbow grease.”
