Pursuing Domesticity (Part One)

"Spring Cleaning" - the two words that sent a thrill of terror through me every time my Mum spoke them, which was, without fail, every Easter break. Spring cleaning meant absurdly long-handled dusters with parrot-coloured tops, confronting spiders under beds, endless boxes of last year's summer clothes which need cleaning and folding, scrubbing floors, other things which I've blocked out involving an outdoor toilet and caterpillars...It's not cleaning per se that bothers me; I do plenty of it, and I find it hard to sleep if I've left the kitchen a mess. But there's something about adding the word 'spring' to it that creates a sudden need to clean all the things we never usually do, and to an impossible standard. Doors which were perfectly functional suddenly need oiling; fences with minimal wear and tear need a new coat of paint, and before you know it, you're spending half the school holiday in B&Q. I'm pretty certain, looking back, that there must have been some kind of ulterior motive - what was my mum up to while the five of us scrubbed like crazy at bathroom walls and reinvented our wardrobe-packing system? My parents could have thrown a wild party every night without us knowing, we slept so well afterwards.

So I was trying to explain to myself why, ten years later, I was voluntarily on my hands and knees on the bathroom floor, scrubbing at mould. My inner anti-ick was screaming, but the clean-freak had triumphed, partly due to a serious damp problem. Seeing as I don't know how to install an extractor fan, and every shower turns our tiny bathroom into a sauna, I'm clearly going to have to deal with the results until some more able fan-installer comes along. There's no time like the present, to beat an old cliché over the head, so there I was, my whole Thursday given over to the dreaded spring clean.

Mould-scrubbing is not fun, or glamorous, but as we all have to do things which are neither fun nor glamorous every day, we might as well have a bit of fun while we're at it, no? This is why I came up with an ingenious plan: to create a mood-lifting side-activity for each of my cleaning jobs. That way, I could come out with a lovely fresh home and a smile on my face; I wasn't going to be one of those women who swapped one for the other.

The plan got off to a happy start. As I scrubbed the bath, I tried to mentally list all the bath toys I'd had when I was younger. This was quite good, although it did leave me wishing that a grown adult could go out and purchase a Winnie-the-Pooh model house with working slide and bubble-blowing chimney without having a child to give it to. Next, as I went for the floor, I went over all the bits of Mozart's Requiem that I could remember from when I was in a choir three years ago. This was supposed to be a fairly quiet activity, but it's difficult to hit the top notes of 'Rex Tremendae Majestatis' at anything less than 80 decibels. It was a bit late, by the time I realised I had the window wide open, to warn the neighbours.

I decided that if I was going to sing anymore I should at least have someone decent to accompany me, so as I moved to tackle the kitchen, I brought out one of my guilty pleasures: a Roxette Hits CD. The hubby is not a massive fan, but he was out playing golf (I know, I know, I might as well don the fluffy pinny and house shoes and have done with it). Suddenly the washing up and recycling-sorting didn't seem so overwhelming, and if the aforementioned neighour had been putting out her washing, she would probably have been confused/bemused by an unseen voice repeating enthusiastically, 'Hello, you fool, I love you!'.

As I still have the vacuuming and more dusting to do, I'd better go, but if I have any more domestic adventures I'll be sure to share them. Someone out there must be finding it funny (she crosses her fingers)...