SPRING HOUSECLEANING

“I have to get this dirty house cleaned by April 4,” Mother announced one chilly morning not long after St. Patrick’s Day.

“Doesn’t look very dirty to me,” Daddy said. “It must be club time again.”

“Well, it is dirty. Can’t you see how dirty it is? It’s my turn to have the East Club on April 4th and the West Club on the 12th. I want to have everything spic and span just like everyone else does when they have club. What would the women think and say if I entertained in a dirty house?”

“Oh, oh!” said Daddy, and he winked at Jenny. “Mother’s on a cleaning binge. Watch out, or she’ll take the scrub brush and lye soap to you too. Looks like you could use a good tubbing.”

Jenny looked at her dirty fingernails, felt her sticky face, her tangled hair and looked down at her dress all stiff in the front from spilled food and thought maybe Mother really would do this. She knew how stiff the scrub brush was and she also knew that the lye soap sometimes made holes in Mother’s fingers on wash days. She didn’t like the idea of the scrub brush and lye soap at all.

“We haven’t painted the kitchen in a long time. That cream colored paint we put on is looking grayer and grayer and there are fly specks all over, and see how dark it is around the stove from the smoke. It’s filthy. I want something cleaner and brighter looking.”

“I have to go to town this afternoon . What color paint should I get?”

”I’d like pale green.”

Jenny couldn’t remember the kitchen ever being any other color. The entire kitchen ceiling and walls were covered with narrow painted wainscotting.

Daddy came home late that afternoon with two big buckets of indoor house paint. On the side of the bucket was a little green label.

“This color Okay?” he asked Mother.

“I think it will look just fine.”

“When do we start?

Mother said she thought they had better look at the directions first.

“Apply paint to clean, well rinsed dry surface,” he read. “If necessary, apply a second coat after the first has thoroughly dried.”

Mother wanted to start the wall washing the next morning, so as soon as she had finished washing and drying the breakfast dishes, making the beds and feeding and watering the chickens and Daddy had finished milking the cows and feeding the pigs and cows, she got out buckets of sudsy water and rags. Mother and Daddy rolled up their sleeves and began washing the wall beside the cook stove. The water soon turned black, but the wall looked much lighter.

“I want to help, “ Jenny told them, so Mother got a little pail and rag and told her to wash the section of the wall between the north door and the east window. Jenny dipped the rag in the soapy water and began scrubbing as hard as she could. The water ran down her arms and she accidentally splashed some in her eye and it stung. Then she bumped into the pail of water and knocked it over.

“My sleeves are all wet and my eye hurts,” she whined.

Mother washed the soapy water out of her eye and Daddy rolled up her sleeves and Mother wiped up the spilled water.

“Are you sure you still want to help?” Daddy asked.

“Yes, I’m going to wash my section,” she insisted. Mother showed her how to wring out her rag better. Soon her fingers got all wrinkled like prunes, but she kept washing. It took a long time to wash the kitchen walls and ceiling. She was glad when it was time to stop and have dinner. Mother dumped pails of the dark gray soapy water way out in the back yard. She looked at Jenny’s hands. She helped her rinse them and dry them and said, “Your poor tender little paddies are going to get all red and rough and chapped.” Mother rubbed some Mentholatum on them and it smelled very strong, and made Jenny think of the way it sometimes was in winter, when someone had a cold.

Mother opened and heated a can of corn, fried eggs for herself and Daddy and sliced bread and put out the butter and made coffee. She asked Daddy to go to the cave for a jar of peaches. Jenny ate a piece of bread and butter, hiding the crusts around the edge of her plate. Mother dished up little bowlfuls of the peaches, which they ate with cream and sugar. There wasn’t the usual conversation at the table. They wanted to get back to finishing the washing and then rinsing the walls and ceiling. While Mother cleaned up the table and took care of the dishes, Daddy finished washing the rest of the walls and ceiling. He dumped out the wash water and Mother got buckets of fresh warm rinse water from the stove’s reservoir, and as they dipped clean rags in the rinse water and went over the walls, the streaks began to disappear.

“It looks pretty good now,” Mother said. Maybe all it needed was a good washing. How much did you pay for those 2 buckets of paint?”

“Almost four and a half dollars.”

“That’s a lot of money for paint. Well, we’ve got it. We might as well use it before it gets old and dries out. We’ll have to let it dry overnight and then we can start painting first thing in the morning.”

When Margaret came home from school that afternoon, she thought the newly washed kitchen looked so pretty and bright and she and Jenny skipped around in the clean room.

The next morning, after chores, and after Margaret left for school, Mother and Daddy began painting. When Jenny awoke, one section of wall was covered in new green paint. Newspapers were spread all over the floor to keep drops of paint from the worn gray wooden floor. Jenny ate her oatmeal quickly and had a feeling of excitement. She liked the smell of the new paint. They told her she mustn't touch the wet paint, but when they weren’t looking, she touched it with her little finger on a spot close to the floor. It made the tip of her finger green and felt sticky and left a tiny fingerprint. She didn’t tell them.

“I wanna paint too,” she begged.

Mother thought for a minute, then she got a pail of clear water and a wide paint brush for Jenny and told her she coul pretend paint the wash stand, a wooden crate with white oilcloth tacked to it. Jenny decided that her paint would be white and she began painting with gusto.
Daddy was on a step ladder painting the ceiling. A glob of green paint dripped on his nose. Under his breath he muttered, “Sonofabitch!”

Jenny painted inside the top of the washstand and under her breath she muttered, “Sonofabitch!”

“What did you say/” Mother asked.

“I said sonofabitch.” Jenny said aloud.

“Don’t say that word.”


“But Daddy said it.”

“Well, YOU don’t say it.”

Jenny got tired of painting the washstand and looked for something else to do. She got out her toys from the little corner of the lower cupboard shelf. She lined up her blocks, Bingo, her pink dog with a light blue nose and ears, Jumbo, her gray elephant which Aunt Grace had made from a rubber inner tube and Teddy, a brown, long legged teddy bear and the little cast iron tractor. She carried on an animated conversation with the toys.

Jenny became restless. She missed the familiar routine of following Mother around as she worked.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

“It’s almost time for dinner,” Mother said. “As soon as I clean up a little, you can help set the table. We aren’t going to be through for a while. We are just a little more than half finished.“

Jenny wasn’t yet trusted with the plates. They were too high in the cupboard for her to reach anyhow. She put forks, knives and spoons on the table, which had an oilcloth tablecloth. Mother made coffee, opened a can of baked beans, cut slices of bread and slices of bologna. Daddy brought up a jar of plums from the cave for their dessert, and they ate it all with a good appetite which had been whetted from the exertion of painting. As they ate, they admired the new color on the wall.

“Pea green paint,” Daddy said.

It was a delicate green color and Mother thought it looked like spring and that it was a very pretty color for their kitchen.

They worked for a long time in the afternoon, and finally they finished just as Margaret got home from school. They gathered up the newspapers and packed them into a big basket and burned them in the stove. The kitchen looked bigger somehow, and very clean and fresh. Margaret liked the light green walls and said that if she’d been home she would have helped.

“I helped,” Jenny said.

“That’s not true, is it Mother?”

“Yes, she helped a lot.”

Jenny beamed proudly.


The next day was sunny and Mother said it was a good day for beating the rugs. The two big Axminster rugs on the dining room and parlor floors were rolled up and dragged to the clothesline and hung over the clothes line making it sag so that they dragged on the ground. Daddy propped up the clothesline with the clothes line stick. He had made the rug beater of heavy wire and Jenny thought it looked a little like the whisk egg beater Mother used in the kitchen when she beat egg whites. Daddy beat clouds of dust out of the rugs, then he rested a while and beat some more. Mother took down all the curtains and dusted the walls and ceiling and tops of the windows and doors with a cloth covered broom. She dusted and polished the furniture and Jenny dusted too. She took a damp rag and went over the floors where the rugs had been and put furniture polish on the dust mop and went over the varnished floor around the edges. Jenny followed with her toy dust mop. The house looked strange and bare and made an echo when you shouted. Daddy gave the rugs several more beatings, and as the afternoon shadows grew long, they dragged the rugs back into the house and unrolled them onto the floors. They looked brighter and prettier. Jenny decided that she liked spring housecleaning.

The next day there were still more cleaning tasks to be done. Mother washed and ironed the filmy red and white dotted bedroom curtains, the white panels and the brown flowered panels that hung on the parlor and dining room windows. She polished silverware with a paste made of ashes from the kitchen range and moistened with a bit of water. She let Jenny polish some out on the porch. She washed them all in hot soapy water and when rinsed and dried, they shone so beautifully. She also washed the pretty flowered dessert plates and cups and the club trays. She took an old broom and swept winter’s mud and dust from the two porches and then dipped the broom in a pail of water and wetted it down. She even took the broom and pail and swept the inside of the toilet, which stood up tall and proud in its place east of the clothes line.

The next day she did her regular weekly washing, being sure to wash sheets and towels so that the house would smell clean and fresh. She got out the good bedspread and draped it over the dual-fold to let all the wrinkles hang out. The house would be ready for club next week, and she gave a tired but contented sigh.