by Katharine Trauger

My kids and I are all “worders”. By that I mean we love grammar and diagraming sentences and such. We love Lynn Truss’s books. We correct each other’s adverbs that happen to be missing the “ly” ending. 

It’s the little things in life that mean so much. 

So when we drove past a motel with the sign, “Newly Renovated Rooms”, we hooted in mock superiority. “Renovate means make new,” we chortled, as we gaped at the obvious mistake. “How can anyone ‘newly make new’?!”  

But maybe that was premature?

I like to think while I mow and mowing season has already begun for us. In fact, I’ve mowed twice already this year. I’m full of thoughts fluttering like a butterfly migration in my head. So I was thinking about “newly renovated” and wondering about the possibility of making something new, anew. I thought of how green is popping out all over, lately. I thought of the return of the birds and their lilting songs and how the peepers are peeping in the damp ditches all around. 

And suddenly it hit me: The best way I ever found, to do Spring cleaning (do NOT turn the page, just yet!) is only about 30 years old. Spring cleaning is a LOT older than that. So maybe I found a new way to make things like new?

Possibly.

Regardless, I’ve learned to love spring cleaning with this new method and you will, too. It’s revolutionary because:

1. You spring clean your house every day.
2. It only takes about 30 minutes.

I am not making this up! Let me tell you a story about why I DO spring clean, and love it:

Once, a long time ago, I went on a successful hunt. 

No, I did not bag a huge elk or an antelope. Not even a deer. Not even a turkey or a quail. Nope. 

What I found, after hunting for 3 days, was a beautiful pearlescent tan orb, pointed on one end like a teardrop, about the diameter of a dime. 

And as soon as I found it, I destroyed it.

It was a black widow spider egg sac. It was under my file cabinet, which I was able to upend because I’d removed all its drawers. 

At last, I’d completed the hunt that began when I’d found the lovely female black widow spider on a lower shelf of one of my bookcases, just behind the Little Golden Books I’d provided for my grandchildren. That was close. At least I knew to be on guard because I know black widows love wooden places to hide. Like toy boxes and behind door frames.

So now that you are ready to begin cleaning your whole house in 30 minutes a day, let me share how I do it so you, too, can have “Newly Renovated Rooms!”

Here we go:

1. Turn off the phone. 
2. Choose where to begin. I like the front door, entryway, and living room, for obvious reasons. 
3. Gather the following: a small bucket of lightly soapy warm water (about a half teaspoon of dish liquid in a gallon) and a rag and towel, rubber gloves if you use them, a small stepladder or stool, and a notepad and pencil. Depending on the location, you might also want a vacuum or duster. Oh, almost forgot: You’ll need a timer.
4. Begin at one corner of the room and use the rag and soapy water on absolutely everything that can take it. Wash the entire surface of the wall, the doors, doorframes, doorknobs, the windows (dry these) and windowsills, the furniture (dry again), the picture frames and any glass in them (dry), the crown molding and baseboards, the lamps and do-dads, etc.  Change the water if needed.
5. Use the notepad to note needed repairs, contents of boxes that need labeling, and any writing ideas you want to remember.
6. This time is not for the ceiling or the floors. Do those as special projects when they are needy. 
7. If you come to a bookcase or desk, clean, only. Do not purge or organize; those jobs are for other moments in your life. But do remove every book, dust it, and clean its shelf. Do remove desk drawers to clean under them, etc.
8. Have a designated place to set miscellaneous items to put away later. That chore, too, is for some other time.
9. Work fast. Work only for thirty minutes. Then get on with the rest of your day.
10. Begin where you left off, tomorrow, and repeat, daily until you’ve cleaned the whole house. Then begin again at the front door.

That is all there is to it. The average house has about ten or twelve rooms. The average room has three or four walls. The average wall is small enough to get done in thirty minutes. 

In my house, counting hallways, there are 52 walls, seven closets, and a LOT of cabinets and shelves. That means I ought to get the house totally clean in less than a year, but I’ve found it takes me closer to two years to get all the way through every room this way. Life does not always happen on schedule . . . 

Still, if my house is “Newly Renovated” every two years, that’s a huge improvement! How about you?!

Katharine Trauger is a retired educator and a women’s counselor. She and her husband spent 25 years running a home and school for children who would otherwise have been homeless and has worked 15 years as contributor and/or columnist for several small professional magazines, with over 60 published articles. She blogs about the rising popularity of “being at home” from a sun room on a wooded hilltop in the Deep South at: Home’s Cool! and The Conquering Mom and tweets at Katharine Trauger (@KathaTrau). She is currently working on a self-help book entitled: Yes, It Hurts, But . . .