My spring cleaning process is often a frenzied tackle of multiple projects, undertaken amid high hopes and lofty goals for the summer season. My fall cleaning process is more of a “wrapping up,” a more systematic process of finishing what I started and/or re-shelving of summer-season toys and distractions. I make intentional choices: what do I NOT want to live with or endure all winter?
For example, I don’t want to winter over with unfinished floors. Starting last year when we met the “super flea,” I began tearing out the wall-to-wall carpet in the upstairs of our home. Without replacement flooring in the budget, the plan was to paint whatever I uncovered. The unfinished wood soaked up more paint than I anticipated, and then the heat of summer came and it was just too hot upstairs.
I just finished that job this week.
I also don’t want to spend the winter with this summer’s dust, dog hair, cobwebs, or general dander, so I also spent a day working from the ceilings down, deconstructing spider castles and swiping away all that had settled during the season.
I drained the pool, folded the shade umbrellas, and brought the all-weather cushions out of the weather. Then I scratched two never-started summer projects completely off my list and swept the leaves off the back porch instead. My summer plans are always loftier than my capabilities.
In my mind, I’ve also “tapped out” of a local battle I stepped into in support of a worthy cause, but which instantly became personal, incessant, dark, and insane. I shed a new, bright light on an issue, but now I choose to step out of the ongoing online obsessive snarling. Informed people see or refuse to see. I see no need to wallow in the mud. The local section remains open for submissions.
My hands and feet are often cold these days, and our concrete block home is now chilled by the cool evenings. Time draws near to turn on the heat, but I want to keep the doors wide open as long as possible, so I put on a sweater and heavy cotton socks instead. I warm my hands in the dishwater as I scrub dishes, and by tucking them into my armpits when I rest.
In the clothing sphere, it’s time to put away summer and bring out fall and winter — the season for jackets and hoodies (though hoodies seem to have graduated to year-round wear for some). The time for throw blankets, shrugs, shawls, and sweaters to come to the foreground and for swimwear, shorts, and anything open-toe to recede to the background and tucked away spaces of my walk-in closet.
I am my mother’s daughter — I have a thing for clothes and shoes. And though over the years I have managed to purge at least half of my fashion collection, this seasonal shift could be a 2-3 day undertaking, depending on the current effectiveness of my not-so-efficient method of managing my laundry. It’s at the “clean” table upstairs where everything gets clogged up.
The intention is for that to be the folding table, where things get folded and put on hangers before being properly put away. But that’s rarely what happens there at the folding table. In reality, it is a “poorly managed piles table,” where clean clothes and linens come to rest in well-intentioned piles from the downstairs dryer, laid out at least so they won’t wrinkle too badly… Until I can’t find what I’m looking for and upset all the piles topsy-turvy.
That is the reality of my folding table: It is now a two-foot-high pile of jumbled, wrinkled, clean clothes. It will take an all-day movie marathon to get that pile tamed and tidied, and truth be told, it has never, ever, been completely cleared. There’s always something on that table that just really has no place else to go.
But if I don’t at least put in great diligence and due attention to the process, I’ll have a bathing suit bottom that will later end up in the underwear drawer or a summer dress shoved in with the nightgowns. There will be something summer season that gets shuffled all winter because it did not go off with its flock during this end-of-season fashion migration.
Kinda like the single black glove I’ve been shuffling here and there all summer, with the lofty dream that it will someday be reunited with its mate.
(Do not take the above image to imply that my closet is ever close to this organized, but it does give an idea of what all might be in there…)
It's time to break out the couch throws and puffy comforters, review my to-be-read pile of books, and bring out my canvas and paints and the soup pot for homemade vegetable soup and cheesy potato soup. My late tomatoes are coming on and I hope to put up at least one batch of juice or spicy tomato soup.
The breezes are consistent now, daily reminders that summer is slipping away with them as they flush through the valley, that the world around us goes on as it should no matter what our personal or political agendas may affect. It won’t be long before the leaves are all grounded, and the evenings grow dark.
I’m hoping for a wet, snowy winter, one that soaks the soil with fluids enough to make the ground muddy and slick before covering it in a thick and heavy coating of snow. I may have emptied the pool, but the new-this-year hot tub will be staying for the winter.
As summer slips away, I pack up the frenzy of summer and look forward, past autumn and the election to a quiet, comfy, simple winter. My annual autumn-is-here cleaning ritual is set to enhance my ability to find comfort in the coming months, to focus on dispensing and alleviating the worry that comes with the upcoming months, a shift from outside frolicking and frustrations to an inside simplicity set to survive and buckle down with intentionally chosen bounties.
Others out there will continue as usual, with no intention or consideration for changing within. And we can choose to let them.
As promised last month, we will continue sharing posts from the archives of Two-Lane Livin’ Magazine, though they will not be emailed to you directly.