Spring Cleaning is a Family Affair

by Mary Ann Romans | More from this Blogger

22 Mar 2009 09:34 AM

Well, my obsession with spring cleaning is finally being noticed by the rest of my family, especially my husband. I approached the subject yesterday and mentioned how this year I really needed the whole family to pull together to get it done. While I normally handle the bulk if not all of the spring cleaning myself, this year it has to be different.

We've been in our new home for almost two years now. Much of the cleaning and repairing time has been ongoing since then. The first few months saw a flurry of cleaning, because the house had been somewhat neglected (imagine having to use brillo on the glass windows to get them clean).

Now we are finally somewhat settled in to a regular cleaning routine, which means that we can also start our annual spring cleaning (there is a fall cleaning too, but it isn't quite as extensive).

The reasons I need the whole family involved this year are simple:

1. This house is bigger than our last one
2. This house has more and bigger people living in it (kids tend to grow and get more stuff)
3. This house has old hard-to-clean windows that take about five times as long to wash.

I'm trying to ease the family into the notion of beginning to spring clean (my husband says it has to be warmer out so we can open all of the windows). I've asked him to help me with a repair in the family room so I can do a little touch up painting, and I've asked the kids to help me with de-cluttering their closets and putting household things in their place (you know how some stuff tends to wander into different rooms).

My husband must have caught the bug because he set out to do a little organizing in the garage (of course he needed to do that in order to reach the paint I mentioned earlier). He also saw me weeding out all of the baby cups and spoons in the kitchen and lent a hand in taking care of it all.

By lunchtime, we had three-and-a-half bags of clothes and other items to go out to donation, four rocks found in my eldest son's room, two acorn caps (also found in my eldest son's room) and a closet dust bunny the size of a small cat to show for it all.

Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, creating a home in the Home Blog, caring for little ones in the Baby Blog and now relationships in the Marriage Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here or subscribe to the blog using the subscription box on the right.

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Learn more about Mary Ann Romans

Mary Ann Romans is a freelance writer, wife and mother of three children. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, the kids and a 16-pound cat.

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