Spring Cleaning

Having finally managed to move to an apartment that I can truly call a home and that has all the things I have always wanted my apartment to have (except the bay window) I also want to keep it clean and in good condition. I’ve never been the kind of person who has to have things in order and who can’t stand a centimeter layer of dust on their table tops. I have been quite content living in a dorm room with a floor-covering carpet and a steady layer of dust on it, so ample that my daily route between the bed, desk and door was quite visible after few months. Only when my parents were coming over for a visit I borrowed a hand vacuum cleaner to get the most visible layer of dust off the floor. I have also always been very content with the huge stacks of used or tried-on clothes covering a chair or a bed.

But now I have experienced a change. I like my flat clean, I like it with things in their right place and I like it without bread crumbles all over the table top and floor. And what I really like are windows that one can see through!

I had mentioned, partly as a joke, to my parents that next time they come over they should help me wash my windows. And they did! So, one Friday night they arrived to the Tallinn D-Terminal with window-washing equipment because me, as a not-so-interested-in-cleaning-person didn’t have anything beyond a vacuum cleaner and a mop. Oh lord how amazing the busy and dirty road outside my kitchen window looked after the window was clean! The tram rails on the ground weren’t just rusty brown, now they were bright rusty brown!

I don’t know if Spring is a time for a proper scrub-up for other Finnish households but in our family Spring always meant one day or a weekend of hard-core cleaning from floor to roof. My Spring cleaning is divided into a longer period of time but nonetheless, it is happening. Another sign, I guess, that even I grow up.

Needless to say that the weekend when we washed the windows was followed by a week of hard rain and wind. After which the windows looked as if they had never been touched in the first place… I think this just proves: what’s the point in cleaning?!