Spring cleaners

Have you got one in your household?

It’s starts innocently enough.

Just a little tidying, here and there.

But then it builds and builds until the person has found themselves caught in a full-blown spring cleaning frenzy.

Spring sprung last week, and it didn’t take long for my wife, who has been on spring break, found herself faced with the urge to clean something.

Not everything, mind you, just…something.

Around our house, the urge to clean everything would go quite unrequited.

The focus of my wife’s energies became our two very messy cars.

Our personal vehicles had fallen into a very sad state of affairs, indeed.

Especially mine.

Well, truthfully, they are both "ours" but there is one that I drive most of the time and another one she drives most of the time.

I have to admire her.

She flung herself headstrong into the mess and a few hours later emerged two very clean vehicles – the kind of cars the average person would not fear entering.

The more she worked on "my" car, however, the angrier she became with her husband.

She would "pop in" periodically to gather cleaning supplies and she did not miss the opportunity to "vent" about the "shameful" condition of the vehicle that I regularly drive.

With each trip to the house from the driveway, she would get angrier and angrier with me.

"I’m sorry," I’d tell her. "I’m so very, very, sorry."

That really didn’t do much good to calm her down.

"You should be sorry! You should be ashamed," she said.

And I was.

As much as I tell myself that I’m too busy to clean up my car, the fact is there have been moments when I could have found the time to clean it out.

Often, when I park the car, I will grab the mail and a coffee cup or two and look around inside the car. I’ll sometimes make a mental note to come back to get more trash out of the car, but somehow, when I get inside the house, my "mental note" just seems to vanish amid the chaos that makes up a normal family evening at our household.

Spring cleaning seems to be a very time-honored ritual. It appears to be an activity that is very good for the soul and very satisfying once the work is accomplished.

Perhaps this coming weekend, I’ll give it a try.