The Town Crier: Autumn cleaning

Published 5:00 pm Sunday, November 19, 2023

Spring cleaning is the one that gets all the publicity. And from the way things used to be, that makes historical sense. After being closed up in your log cabin or your castle all winter, trying to keep from freezing, it was a welcome relief to throw those windows open, air out months of fireplace smoke, flush the moths out and then dust and sweep the place out.

Back in the old-timey winter days you kept the doors shut as much as possible, and people coming and going all winter were tracking in all kinds of dirt and mud and dead leaves and, let’s face it, when everything out in the world is horse-powered, all kinds of things inside you don’t want. Beat those rugs and quilts and drapes and let’s get this place spic and span for the warm weather!

But thanks to modern life, with inventions like heat and air conditioning, vacuum cleaners and even “welcome mats” to wipe your feat on, spring cleaning is not what it used to be. And with the cycle of modern life, there are more seasons than just the four, so autumn cleaning is, I argue, a “thing” just as valid as spring cleaning.

Multiple other seasons

When it comes to the seasons, the classics are spring, summer, winter and autumn. But like a lot of things, we’ve added to those four foundational seasons in ways that would make Vivaldi, were he alive today, have to write a more comprehensive piece of baroque concertos than “The Four Seasons” he wrote back in the 1700s.

And as the old joke goes, if it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it! In addition to the seasonal changes that come from our circumnavigation of the sun, we’ve added multiple other seasons. There’s the “Back to School” season, the “Spring Break” season, “Halloween,” “The Holidays” (which go from Thanksgiving through New Year’s) and “Valentine’s” (which if you’re smart, you’ll stretch out for more than just a day for your sweetie).

For fans, we have football, basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer seasons. For the movie/TV watchers we have the “new fall season” of premiering shows, and the season of “summer blockbusters” at the theater. The farm-to-table foodies welcome each season of veggies that come along. Readers know the “Serious Book Season” is the fall and the “Beach Book Season” starts in late fall. So, as you can see, our year is now split up into bits and pieces as we go from one excuse to celebrate, eat and romance to another, regardless of where the sun is in the sky or how short or long the days are. But the original four seasons still rule the roost on the overall flow of our lives.

Cleaning up from the summer

Which gets us back to autumn cleaning. Years ago the Town Crier visited the idea of “fall cleaning” but in truth that was about getting ready for fall rather than cleaning up after summer and warm weather. It covered finding your sweaters, leaving some fireworks out for New Year’s Eve and buying an ice scraper, things to prepare for the coming cooler months. But for now, let’s think about cleaning up from the summer so there’s room for what’s coming until spring.

The leaves in the yard are staring you right in the face, so I’m going to skip over that. My advice is make a giant leaf pile for Thanksgiving to keep the kids busy outside, otherwise they’re just going to hang around the dessert table and keep you from getting thirds (I’m assuming you know enough to go ahead and get seconds on dessert while you’re getting firsts, if not, here’s a tissue, you’ll need it as soon as it hits you how much dessert you’ve missed out on over a lifetime).

A proper cleaner starts at the highest point and works their way down. To clean the summer months from your house, start on the roof and make sure any lost kites, popped birthday balloons or crashed balsa glider planes are cleaned off. You’ll need the whole roof for those leaves coming down and eventually clearing them off for snow that might (hopefully) come.

Inside, dust the tops of the shelves, bookcases and cabinets. You’ll be putting decorations and lights up on the tops of things coming up and you don’t want a dust storm when you do it. And you would be mightily embarrassed if on New Year’s Eve the cork from the toasting champagne were to pop up there and a guest climbed up to get it for a keepsake, only to find a dust bowl suitable for Oklahoma circa 1932.

Remember the plants

We’ve already had our first frost or two of the year so I hope we’re not too late reminding you that the plants have to come in. If you have a covered porch, they probably made it just fine, but for potted plants out there on uncovered decks, at the corner of the house or at the end of the driveway, it’s time to store or toss.

For toss annuals, they can be replaced with nice fall flowers that will keep blooming on the chilly mornings, like pot marigold, phlox and cornflowers. For things you want to try and keep, you’ve got to lug them inside, prep the floor where they’re going to sit so overwatering doesn’t ruin the rug and make sure they’re going to get sunshine streaming in from a window. Voila, your yard is cleaned of potted plants! Just don’t trip over them inside if you get up in the middle of the night to get water and forget you just brought them in. I speak from experience.

The summer leftovers

Now it’s time to go through the garage and clean out the summer leftovers, and by leftovers I mean the summer toys and decor that are broken, used up or busted from summer fun. There are probably some fold-out yard furniture that either the dog chewed or your “Uncle Tiny” sat in and bent the frame. And that was before he had three burgers and four hot dogs on the Fourth. There are probably chewed-up dog toys, busted pool playthings that were used playing in the yard sprinkler, a beach umbrella that only folds the wrong way now and various summer detritus like popsicle sticks, empty Silly String cans, shedded dog hair and grass clippings blown in from the lawnmower, all hiding under various shelves or tables on the porch or deck.

Back inside, it’s time to gather the shoes and shake them out. Anything like sandals or crocs that went to the beach will (and always will) have sand in them. If boots were hiking in the woods or sneakers were riding bikes, they’re going to have red clay powder in them. Time to shake them out and make room for dead leaf flakes and mud clumps. Wash the T-shirts one last time cause they’re going to be stored for a while. You’ll use some T-shirts over the cold months, but mainly for indoors, sleeping in or under other shirts. And time to put the swimsuits away and switch them out with wherever you keep the long johns over summer.

I hope everyone in your house has been so busy having summer fun that they haven’t had time to play video games, but with the winter coming it’s time to dust the old Playstation or Xbox off and make sure it’s still plugged in to the TV. For that matter, if you still have physical media (you know, records, dvds, blu-rays, things you can hold in your hand as opposed to streaming), time to dust those off and get ready to watch those movies you bought but never sat down and enjoyed. Teach the kids black and white movies are just as good as anything in color with superheroes, they’ll thank you later.

See? Autumn cleaning is not just cleaning things from the warm season that you’re not going to see again until April, it’s also about getting the stuff that’s been stowed to use once again. There are blankets, quilts and flannel sheets that could probably use a wash to freshen them up or at the very least hang them outside to air a bit. On the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet or pantry it’s time to get down the big pot you use for chili and the crock pot you use to slow cook good-smelling meals now that the grill outside is going to get some well-deserved rest.

And lastly, if you’re like me and have a fireplace, it’s time to clean it out from last winter. Seems I always forget to clean it during spring cleaning, so now that we’re hoping it will be cold enough to have a Christmas Eve fire, I’ve got to clean it out, shoveling the ashes slowly so they don’t fill the air with dust I’ll have to vacuum up later, and then taking them out and scattering them on the garden or flowerbeds around the house for fertilizer.

Whew! Now that everything is good to go, I can sit back in wool socks and not move until spring. Well, that’s what the bears do, right?

Mark Hannah, a Dalton native, works in video and film production.