Been There, Done That: Fall clean as important as the spring

We had a few weeks to kind of settle in at our new camper, new site and new campground. We are very much looking forward to our new adventures in the spring. In the meantime, campground season is over and we are back at home, doing the usual end of summer juggling game trying to fit all of the doubles into just one household.

Everything from the camper fridge and food cupboard came home — now we have two tubs of butter, two cans of cooking spray and so on. By the time we no longer have two open bottles of ketchup and mustard and syrup, etc., it’ll be time to stock up on those things for spring opening of the camper. And so it goes.

Not going to the camper every weekend means more free time at home, more time to take a good look around. And, OMG, this place is filthy. With everything we went through this summer, the house has been totally neglected. I was motivated to devote my very being to retaking my house.

I came up with a plan to methodically go room by room, cleaning every nook and cranny. Taking everything off the kitchen counters for a wipe down, moving furniture out for a thorough sweep and mop. I cleaned the back door and it looked like a different door.

I cleaned the hall by the shoe closet, wiping down the cubbies, moving the microwave stand and potato and onion box and giving the floor a good what-for. I took all of Dave’s shot glasses off the corner cabinet for cleaning and dusted the shelf itself. I used a wood cleaner on the bathroom door and it looks like the day Dave hung it almost 30 years ago.

I love seeing results like that. It inspired me to continue on. In the bathroom, I cleaned out the closet to make room for the cabinet we had on the porch at the old camper. We used it for a mini tool shed there but it didn’t work at our new site. It just fits in the closet and gives me a great space for keeping our stock of everything from toilet paper and shampoo to dry goods and sauces. That thing really took a load off from what I expected the utility room to keep squared away and out of sight.

For the general cleaning, I had tried to eradicate the ceiling cobwebs with the vacuum, but it was hard going. The hose coils up so tight I had to hold the vacuum up to reach high enough. Only a vacuum will do as some genius decided we needed to stucco the ceiling. Running a duster over it makes more of a mess than I had to start with.

By the time I had worked my way through the rest of the downstairs rooms and was halfway through the living room, it occurred to me to use the shop vac. Shop vac tools are pretty universal, the extensions from the one in the garage work on this one. It stayed on the floor while I used a 7-foot wand to reach right up and grab those stubborn dust bunnies. Lesson learned.

I vacuumed the steps and shop-vacked the cobwebs in the stairwell. I worked my way through reorganizing the closet in the front room and the football room and used the last sunny 60-degree day to clean 16 windows, inside and out. Love, love, love our new windows and being able to do that from inside. The 17th window will have to wait until I dig out all of our Christmas stuff that’s in front of it.

I cleaned a little path in “the hole” and shoved our spare comforter and pillow shams in there. I used the wood cleaner on the cedar chest that’s well over a hundred years old and it’s beautiful. I decided to wait on doing the 75-year-old cherry dressers until after I did our room, which I started right after I reorganized the upstairs bathroom and got it back up to snuff.

I cleaned our headboard on our California King former waterbed frame and dusted all of the hats on it. And then I ran out of steam. I threw myself into planning and preparing for our annual Friendsgiving. Now that that’s over, I’m finding it hard to finish the fall cleaning I had begun with such gusto.

My problem is that I kind of have to be in the mood to clean and that just doesn’t happen all that often. When it does, I have to run with it. Unfortunately, I didn’t run the whole way through the house.