SPRING CLEANING - Part 1

After he and my daughter left I got together the boxes where the decorations had been stored. Now was the time to remove the ornaments and place them gently into the compartments where they had been kept for so many years. In our former house there was a pull-down staircase to the attic where things that were needed only at certain times were kept. Because the house was a ranch with a low roof, the attic was rather small and I had to slide around on pieces of cardboard to get around up there. The roofing nails stuck through threatening to stick me as I slid by underneath. I had made it a habit to organize attic storage according to what I would need in what order. I had an entire year's worth of artificial flowers to decorate with in all seasons. These were in boxes placed close to the stairs access hole because I was always changing them. Behind those were things I only used occasionally, like Christmas decorations and ornaments. Farthest away were business items like old tax forms.

We now live in another ranch house but this one has high and distinct roof lines. This gives us a huge attic with a ceiling high enough to walk in. It is accessed through a hole in the ceiling of the master bedroom closet. There are no pull-down stairs, and my husband made his first foray into it using a ladder twelve years ago when we bought the place. The ladder system was cumbersome, and we never used it. But fortunately this house has another attic over the garage. This one is totally separate and has pull-down stairs already in place. Last fall when we cleaned out the garage to make room for my husband's car, we saw things that had been put up there years before. There were more things to go up, and this was a tricky job for my husband. I could only help, now that I am in a wheelchair, by handing things up to him from my seated position. Both of us agreed that using the basement might be easier!

Because my stair and ladder climbing days are over, I use the closed in porch as a place to put things. Before I had it closed in, wind and rain damaged furniture and cartons that were stored there. Now, $3,700 dollars later and with the purchase of a ramp, I can explore the boxes that were put there in our hasty move. Some of them hold my late mother's possessions like her real bone china dishes and the blue Pfaltsgraff stoneware dinner set I gave her for Christmas one year. There are also contents of boxes of her things that I did not sell after her death. We sold a lot of small items at flea markets back in the 1990's, and what is left I kept out of sentiment. There are also several artificial Christmas trees that I haven't used for a long time. When fiber optic models fist came out everybody had to have one, and we watched a color wheel change the appearance of the branches. This was not the kind of tree to hang ornaments on. No, it was designed to placidly stare at, like a TV set but with nothing happening on it. Then one day it went the way of other fad trees, like the silver ones made of aluminum foil. No one I knew ever had one of those. Was it that Santa wanted his cookies on a plate instead of hung on Reynolds wrap? Yet just recently I have seen this silver tree shown in magazines and flyers that come with the coupon sections of the Sunday paper. Will the 1950's come back to haunt us? Maybe I will hold on to my fiber optic tree for when it comes back into fashion.

In the interest of doing some cleaning, I will take the boxes holding the Christmas decorations out to the porch. While there I will look for certain lamps that belonged to my mother which would look nice in my own living room now. One of them was part of my childhood for years, and I will bring in the piece of her furniture on which it sat. At that point I will bring in other pieces of MY furniture which never made it into the house. Several will provide storage in the living and dining rooms. This will take time however, because everything that as been on the porch is in desperate need of cleaning. Short of sand blasting, it will remain covered in the thick dust that blows through here on a daily basis. When spring REALLY arrives I will open up all the porch windows and subject it to a hefty dose of Liquid Gold® cleaner. For now I will move things around enough to vacuum the carpet that the previous owner put (or left) down.

Now the only part of Christmas to remove is the actual tree and the huge blue lights that my husband got on sale right before Christmas. Intended to be used OUTSIDE, the bulbs look like the enormous teeth of a monster like a shark. He hung them in the living room in front of the picture window and the effect was of something with its mouth open waiting to gobble us up. My secret word for it was "Jaws", and I will be glad when it gets taken down and used NEXT YEAR on the trees outside. The coffee table on which the tree sat was covered with a piece of white vinyl followed by a Christmas themed table cloth and then with a home made tree skirt. All of those things must be taken down, cleaned off or laundered, and put away. The drapes and valances on the picture window are full of dust and cat fur, and they must be taken down. Then the windows need washing before rehanging the drapes. Years ago I did this job four times a year: remove, wash, and rehang on every window. Now things have changed, and I can no longer do my cleaning the same way. Perhaps I should call Merry Maids® to come in and give me an estimate on doing it?