Advertisement
Supported by
The Pragmatist
BY the time spring arrives, the last thing most of us want to do is spend a weekend cleaning the place where we’ve been cooped up for several months.
Some years, I ignore the spring-cleaning ritual until we have visitors (which, if I’m lucky, gets me to November). Other years, I get it done before April passes.
But this year seems different. The endless autumn has yielded plenty of 50-degree days to roam outside, so it feels easier to sacrifice a day of decent weather to the gods of sanitation.
Jeff Davidson, the author of “Simpler Living,” a manual partly on keeping house, said that early March is the best time for spring cleaning. “You should do it when you really don’t want to go outside anyway,” he said. “It should be called pre-spring cleaning.”
That’s fine, maybe, if you don’t mind the stench caused by cleaning solutions and random janitorial catastrophes. (I’ll get to those later.) But with temperatures continuing to hover in the springtime range, I thought I’d throw open the windows and try to get the big chore done.
Before starting, I sought advice from people who know how to do the job properly, and as fast as humanly possible. In addition to Mr. Davidson, I called on Debra Johnson, the training manager for Merry Maids, a national housecleaning service, and Debbie Sardone, vice president of the Clean Team, a publisher of cleaning books and online retailer of nontoxic cleaning products.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Advertisement