I have a second cousin in southern Illinois who emailed yesterday that she has started spring cleaning even though the weather is still cold and snowy there. It takes warm days with gentle breezes to make me get the spring cleaning bug because part of it is being able to open the windows and doors and let the fresh air in.

Around here, spring means getting ready to move to my summer place so I need to get this place all spiffed up. In general the reason for this is that when I come back here in the fall, I want it to be clean and nice to come back to, like a good hotel. Never mind that Mr. PigPen and PigPen Junior The Cat will be here for several months without me, so even if I cleaned everything within an inch of its life, it's going to get some wear and tear when I'm not around. Not that he's a horrible slob, but things get a little grungy around the edges.

One of the first things my mother did for spring cleaning was wrap one of those large white flour sack dishtowels around her broom and use that to sweep down the ceiling and the walls, so I always do it that way out of remembrance. And I've been reading up on Green Cleaning, meaning using mostly baking soda and white vinegar as the main cleaning ingredients instead of buying those chemical-laden cleaners. Mind you, I'm not a fanatic about it, but if I run out of a cleaner, I'm willing to try the green.

Last fall I was trying to clean the picture windows at my other place using white vinegar and water. I saw on the Internet that those commercial window cleaners we've been buying for years contain a bit of wax that stays on the glass, so we're supposed to add a tiny bit of dish soap to the vinegar wash water to cut through this wax. My efforts there left something to be desired, so this summer I'll give it another try until I get good at it and those windows sparkle. I may give up on the green thing and find some commercial stuff that does a good job.

That's something else I got from my mother - deciding to get good at some small thing and re-doing until it was perfect. And then she moved on to something else. She usually did it with food though. The project I most remember was her desire to make the perfect angel food cake from scratch. I don't know what she did with all the egg yolks, but do remember big wads of noodles draped over broom handles to dry, so maybe that was at the same time.

The other big thing to accomplish here is shampooing the carpets. Last summer I had to buy a carpet shampoo machine because the cabin renters spilled Koolaid or something on the rug. When I came here in October we loaded it in the car so I can have a go at the carpets here, and then we'll haul it back to Colorado. Since I don't plan to bring it back every year, we'll have to do a good job, and might do a lot of furniture moving. That process will trigger a lot of picking up and rearranging that will go a long way toward making this place look like spring has sprung for sure.