Spring Cleaning !! ?

Here we are, a hop skip and very small jump away from Autumn. What am I doing? Spring Cleaning, of course.

My Granny and Mum always gave the house a good fettling at this time of the year.
Their thinking was that if you do it in the spring the flies are all over it in summer and you have to do it in autumn anyway.

That is a tongue in cheek view as we did spring clean, the early March sun is low in the sky and pokes its rays into all the corners, nooks and crannies. No cobweb is left in the dark.

In fact as I remember we seemed to clean constantly, it was a big house with large rooms and high ceilings. The doors and windows were open almost constantly and dust was seen flying through the house when the land was being worked.
Monday was the big wash day and all the beds were stripped and left to "air" for most of the day. If it was school holidays it was my job to go behind the beds and clean the skirting boards and then polish the brass bedsteads. It was a rule that the parts you couldn't see had to be as clean as the ones on view.

"A stranger to a dwile" was the worst thing my Granny would say about anyone. A dwile is a cleaning cloth in Norfolk, usually a part of an old sheet or towel that had been hemmed and repurposed for another life.

I remember being in the village shop and someone gossiping about a local girl who had "got herself in trouble" (I had no idea what she meant) and running her down. My Granny tapped her on the shoulder and told her that only the good girls get caught as the bad ones know better, then she told her to look in her own home.

Off track again.

Anyway, I was chatting to my sister earlier and she told me that she was spring cleaning today as well. It's in our blood, and we did learn it, rather as children learn their times tables, through frequent
repetition.

So I just have the paintwork in the hall to do today and it's Kitchen and Pantry tomorrow. I will take the chance to make an inventory of cupboards and shelves while I am moving things to clean.

I am that 1950' housewife. I was there. I lived the dream. (nightmare when the sun was shining and I wanted to be outside)


Keep safe.

                      TTFN                                          Pam