Spring cleaning could be a lot more difficult

Hi neighbors. Spring is almost here, and that means spring cleaning time is upon us! Most modern housewives don't clean twice a year and younger women look at we over-30 gang like we're crazy when we talk of spring cleaning. "What's so different about that? I clean all year round," some have said. Perhaps indicating that people who speak of spring cleaning only clean their homes once a year.

Well, young(er) ladies, let's talk about a real spring cleaning.

Let's compare today's modern homes with the homes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Unlike today, spring cleaning didn't just mean running the vacuum sweeper over the carpet in every room and the stairs. Nor did it imply simply mopping every room in one day, including pulling the fridge and stove away from the wall to clean under and behind them.

Spring cleaning involved a total remodeling of the house.

Spring was the time when it was finally warm enough to open up the house and air it out. All the doors and windows were opened and almost everything in the house was packed outside.

There was no wall-to-wall carpeting and few vacuum cleaners. Rugs, from throw rugs to room-sized ones, were pulled up and taken outside.

There they were laid out on the grass or hung up on the clothesline and beaten with wooden or metal paddles until the paddle couldn't raise any more dust off the rug. Or until the person wielding the paddle became too exhausted to continue from beating the rug and/or from yelling for the children to come and help.

You might remember those thick, but wonderfully warm and cozy, feather beds, blankets and pillows. All the linen was stripped off for washing and the small to huge bags filled with feathers had to beaten as well. Sometimes they were emptied and restuffed with fresh feathers.

Rooms that had been shut off for the winter were opened and aired out. Sheets that had covered the furniture in those rooms had to be taken off and washed.

Many homes were heated with wood or coal-burning stoves or fireplaces. Between cleaning out the ashes and fighting the smoke that refused to go up the chimney, furniture and everything else got a good coating of soot, ash and dust that never seemed to go away.

When spring arrived, the heating stoves that often were the center of every room they were in, were dismantled and taken out of the house for storage.

Although the menfolk usually carried out the stove and the stove pipes, the women had to clean up the soot and ashes that were distributed throughout the house by the move.

Once the stoves were gone, everything in the house was given a thorough dusting and/or washing down.

Furniture like covered couches and arm chairs -- any furniture that had cloth coverings over any form of padding -- had to be taken outside and whacked a few times with the rug beater.

Since a lot of the cooking was done on wood-burning stoves, many families moved their entire kitchens out of the primary home into a "summer kitchen" where the heat generated by cooking could be kept away from the family.

This left more room in the kitchen as well, so all of the family might get to sit around the table for their meals instead of the children sitting on the stair-steps or on boards behind the table.

Some of the children's beds might be moved onto screened-in porches.

Windows and window curtains all had to be washed and screens checked and mended as needed before 'bug season' began.

Roofs and cisterns had to be checked and cleaned before the spring rains started.

If you are thinking all this couldn't be done in a single day you are right. Spring cleaning might take a week to finish. Once done, the house was considered revamped into summer living quarters.

Spring cleaning often came early, as the entire family might be needed to put in the crops, fix nests for setting hens and plant the vegetable garden later.

Until the next time friends remember, before we complain about any chore we have to do these days, think about how much more difficult it would be doing it without electricity, air-conditioning or a cell phone.