Technology puts more spring in annual cleaning

Anything associated with spring -- even spring cleaning -- looks good when you have had more than 60 inches of snow.

That once-a-year top-to-bottom cleaning that many still do each spring isn't fun. But compared to how our ancestors had to approach the annual rite of the season, we have it easy.

Besides, in many cases, our spring chores have evolved into more spring organizing than hard-core cleaning. Thanks to advances in cleaning technology, it's easier for us to keep up with those tasks than it was for our grandparents.

No one knows for sure where the tradition of spring cleaning originated, but Joy Matthiessen, executive director of the Des Plaines Historical Society, believes it was a practical necessity.

"Coal dust or soot from the wood stove would accumulate in a house during the winter. So when spring came, people wanted to open up their houses, air them out and clean out the dirt that had accumulated over the winter," Matthiessen said.

"And it was a total cleansing of the house. They would take down all of the curtains, wash them in hot water and stretch them on curtain stretchers," she said.

They also would wash all the windows, then open them to air out the house. They would remove the wool carpets and take them outside to be hung over a clothesline and beaten with a special carpet beater to get the dirt out, Matthiessen said.

"Beating the rugs was usually the job of the children," she added.

While the rugs were out of the rooms, the furniture was also removed and the floors and walls thoroughly washed. Cobwebs were attacked and light fixtures, woodwork, doorknobs, silver and furniture was all polished.

Then, in most homes, the wool winter rugs were rolled and stored and the summer rattan or rush carpets were put in their place for the summer, Matthiessen said.

Heavy winter draperies which were used to help keep out the cold were also sometimes removed for the summer, leaving only roll-down shades and lacy sheers covering the windows for the warmer months.

In bedrooms the mattresses were flipped and the heavy winter bedding was washed and stored away. It was replaced with lightweight summer bedding.

"Spring cleaning was a general sprucing up of the house from basement to attic during March or April," Matthiessen said.

"They were removing all of the mud, snow and dirt residue that had built up over the long months of confinement in the house.

"Even in the 1950s when I was a student in the Chicago Public Schools, I can remember getting off for Clean Up Week," she continued. "I remember being off school and spending much of the time cleaning up our house after winter."

In the intervening years, it would appear that Clean Up Week evolved into Spring Break, which is certainly not centered around cleaning the house.

By the beginning of the 20th century, washboards had been replaced by wash tubs. Women would be able to wash many more clothes at a time by using a hand agitator that looked a lot like a plunger and was moved up and down to move the items through the soapy water and clean them. Water for the washtub was heated on the stove, unless the family was wealthy and already had hot and cold running water in the home.

Once washed and dried on the clothesline, everything was ironed. Iron handles were removable, according to Matthiessen, so that one or two of the iron hot plates could be sitting on the stove heating while another hot plate was being used by the person ironing clothes, curtains or linens. It was a matter of efficiency, she said.

The Sears catalogs of those days were full of feather dusters made of turkey feathers, counter brushes, carpet beaters, self-ringing mops and even curtain stretchers that doubled as quilting frames.

But two of the most unique cleaning items that still appear in the 1907 Kinder house in Des Plaines are the decorative metal dust corners which keep dust out of the corners of the individual stair steps and the central vacuum system which had to be one of the first of its time.

Matthiessen said that the home's owner, Benjamin Kinder, was a hardware merchant so he, of course, wanted to showcase all of the latest products in his own house. The central vacuum system worked much like they do today with plug-in spots around the house and a large motor and repository in the basement.

Catalogs of the day show women in long dresses using long wands attached to the wall to vacuum cobwebs and dust from the walls, corners and ceilings, she said.

Contrast all of that to today. Housework is no longer the exclusive chore of women. And whoever is cleaning usually has to do it in carefully carved out blocks of time because they also have a career outside the home. The days of an entire week devoted to tearing the house apart and cleaning it are over.

But if you do decide to get ambitious and celebrate the end of this miserable winter with some spring cleaning, instead of muttering about the task, thank your lucky stars that you live today instead of a century ago.