late spring cleaning

Does anyone do real, true spring cleaning anymore? The kind like our grandma's used to do?I think they used to put it off until spring because it is so stinkin' hard! Well, I'm pretty sure I would make my grandma proud most days. My house is relatively clean and tidy for the most part. Nothing can compete with her immaculte home but I do try. I actually like to clean, I know I am weird. I get a good sense of accomplishement from some visible vacuum lines in my carpet. Shiny wood furniture gets me all excited. And a tidied up room makes me feel at peace. I know, I am really weird. I guess I don't necessarily do the "spring cleaning" thing, I just clean year-round, or so it seems.

There are however, some jobs I really do not like to do around the house. I detest cleaning my bird's cage, so much so, I will nag, yes, nag my husband to do it. Cleaning bathrooms is another job I loathe. Yuck. If we ever strike it rich, I am hiring a bathroom cleaning lady right after I buy my Corvette.

And another job that stinks is cleaning blinds. Oh how it makes me grumpy. For the past two weeks I have been cleaning blinds (and therefore windows and curtains/window treatments). I have been doing a room a day. We have gobs of windows. Seriously, when we built our house we added them out the wazoo, what were we thinking? Well, besides the glorious natural light and views, they can be a pain.

I saved the family room until last. It has 5 large windows with blinds and transom windows everywhere. Jeez, it was overwhelming. See...

My method, surely not the best in the world but it works, is to clean and hose off the blinds in our driveway. Then the sun air dries them and I can clean the windows as they dry. This has been working for the past two weeks, no problem. Until yesterday.
Here are my blinds all drying looking good, then the kids and I were headed upstairs to get our bathing suits on for a good couple hours of pool time. Boom! Out of nowhere a freakish storm hit and my pool plans were cancelled and the blinds got extra clean, wink wink. In fact, it rained so much they had to stay outside all night to dry, then, it rained on them again this morning. Ugh, I might never get them back up.

I wanted to call my grandma and tell her this whole spring cleaning is for the birds. But I didn't, thankfully this is my last room of blinds to clean. I still have a few windows to clean but they are easy so it won't be bad. Then I think I will wait until next spring to do anymore heavy duty cleaning!