It’s nearly spring-cleaning time again and already many of us are feeling that anxious compulsion—like rutting season for moose—except with trash bags. Some people get it so badly they apparently lose their ability to form coherent sentences. Maybe you’ve seen “for sale” notices advertising some item the seller presumably once cared enough for to purchase, but now, so eager they are to clear the space it occupies that the mere sight of the thing fills them with revulsion—like a swollen wood tick on the end of their nose. “Need gone!” it implores buyers to help them rid their home of this horror. “Need gone”? Is that even English? It sounds like something a two-year-old would say. (I have a two-year-old nephew who has discovered how to end any argument with an adult with just two words. “All done,” he says. And that’s that.)
I love spring. I love the fresh, bright tulips and the daffodils. I love the tiny buds on our plum trees. But that spring sunshine is a truth-teller and what it tells me is that our windows are so dirty they are unable to perform the basic light-transmitting function of windows inasmuch as they appear to be constructed mainly of smudges, spiderwebs and old dried dog slobber. Having not even noticed them all winter, our bleary windows have now become a matter of the utmost urgency.
After the snow melts, you see all sorts of things you never knew were there—or were hoping would magically disappear. I vaguely recall tossing an ancient, hand-riveted boiler tank out by the trash cans last fall after a remodeling project with the intent of hauling it to the landfill. But, before long, it was buried under the snow and forgotten. After a few warm days this spring, the tank emerged, glowing so brightly by the fence that an enterprising recycler inquired earnestly if he could have it, perhaps to use it for building a steam ship or a locomotive.
In the spring, it feels like everything ought to be new. There is new, fresh green grass and new leaves on the maple trees, new baby robins. Even the spring air feels new and you want to fill your lungs with it to wash away any lingering stale remnants of winter. You want to get new clothes and new furniture. How can we live with this old carpet any longer? And that old green wall could use a fresh coat of paint. There was a cartoon in the New Yorker magazine a few years ago, depicting a man in his knees planting seeds in his garden. His wife calls over his shoulder, “I’m doing some reorganizing—are there any of your possessions you want to keep?”
My grandmother was a child of the Depression. She knew the real value of things. A torn shirt wasn’t $50 for a new one. It was a half hour with a needle and thread under dim light after regular chores were done. There were no shopping malls even if you had money—and nobody did. What you had, you fixed, you patched, greased and polished. You needed what you owned and nothing ever got so broken that it needed gone