Spring cleaning is here, like it or not

Cleanliness is next to godliness

On the first day of spring, our family started cleaning in earnest and then purging fiercely. But our annual cleaning began unwittingly. 

For three days, we’ve been trying to find Craig’s passport, but to no avail. We’ve looked everywhere! With fear, worry, and anxiety, we've attacked room after room. Every couch, closet, file, cupboard, drawer—every nook and cranny—has been ransacked and turned inside out. 

The passport is gone. Vanished. And with no good explanation, either.

In the process of rummaging through the entire house, top to bottom, we’ve all cleaned mightily. The passport is missing, but so are all those dust bunnies under the couches, cobwebs in the closets, and crumbs under the fridge. Honestly, the one and only good thing about losing that passport is that spring cleaning is here, like it or not, and our house is, in fact, looking a little brighter, and a little less cluttered. It is, after all, that time of year to throw things out. Even the Bible says there’s “a time to cast away” (Ecclesiastes 3:6). As the saying goes, "Cleanliness is next to godliness." 

Most of us, though, seem to fill up our homes with unnecessary purchases faster than we can get rid of old stuff. Even well-intentioned cleaning fanatics can innocently step back into the never-ending trading circle. Just as we manage to dejunk, the weather gets warmer, more weekend garage sales pop up, and we flock to buy other people’s junk. 

In our frenzied search for the missing passport, lots of our own family's "junk" has turned up. So far, I have unburied four play guns, two outdated 72-hour kits, several forgotten coupons and gift cards, one favorite family game, and plenty of ordinary trash.

Since spring began officially, it’s been raining like crazy here, with lots of gray, angry-looking skies to match my frustrated mood. Fortunately, though, that dreary rain is keeping me from cleaning my filthy carpets—one of my least favorite spring-cleaning jobs. When the sun comes out again, I suppose I’ll have to do that job, too. In the meantime, though, I'm thinking about shooting someone with those guns.