Maintenance
Spring Cleaning with Sunshine
Welcome spring into your home
Now that the spring is starting to chase winter away it's time for us to do the same. All of us are familiar with the tradition of spring cleaning, but most of us don't realize that's it's more important ritual now than ever. As houses become more air tight the air quality in a home can degrade substantially over the winter months. This is particularly true of newer construction.
Spring allows us to finally throw open the windows and clear the stale air out of the house. Having the windows open also allows the fumes from cleaning agents to escape ... which makes it the perfect time to deep clean everything. Even natural cleaners can release harmful fumes into the air. Vinegar is one of the safest cleaners a person can use in a house, but if there is a bleach residue from previous cleaning, the chemical reaction of the two can release toxic gas into the air. It's a good reason to exhaust cleaning fumes whenever you clean regardless of the cleaning products used.
Spring also heralds the arrival of our favorite easy-to-use low-cost, low-toxic, all natural cleaner. Bright sunlight is great for many cleaning chores. Dust mites and mold hate direct sunlight, so take advantage of this by setting out your pillows, down comforters, and any other items you can think of for a nice sun bath. Line drying linens is an excellent way to take advantage of the natural cleaning effects of sunlight while saving on energy by not using you dryer.
Direct sunlight can have surprising results. Bathrooms with no windows tend to get mildew very easily even with regular cleanings and religious use of the exhaust vent. Shower curtains that are swapped out regularly and washed using the sanitation cycle on the washing machine may still have black spots on the bottom of the shower curtains. Even bleach may not remove them. Sunlight, even in modest amounts, can prevent mildew and molds from forming.
To avoid getting into the wasteful cycle of replacing shower curtains every couple of months, we like to draw on a little of Grandma's common sense: Direct sunlight bleaches stains that nothing else seems to work on. Sure enough, she was right. One day hanging in the sun removed the black spots that we had been fighting with toxic labor-intensive methods. Sitting in the spring sun watching linens hanging in the sun is now my favorite spring cleaning ritual. (And they smell good too, when they come back inside.) Once freshened, winter linens and comforters can be stored over the summer.
(© S. LLoyd - 2007)