Life Hacks Guide to Spring Cleaning

Green stuff is poking up around my driveway. I think they are daffodils, but I planted them too close to the edge of the driveway and they get trampled on before they can bloom. But still…Yay Spring!

We’ve reached that time of year where we are supposed to do something called ‘spring cleaning’. I’m under the impression that means we’re supposed to clean springs, which seems an enormous waste of time. I mean, we can barely be bothered to change our sheets at reasonable intervals, much less clean the bed springs. Besides, we have one of those memory foam beds. There aren’t even any springs to clean.

Pro tip: If you want to get your spouse to change the sheets, then marry a person with super sensitive skin and eat toast in bed. 

Turns out, ‘spring cleaning’ means we’re supposed to clean our whole house. Yes, the whole house.

Judgey types frown upon cutting corners. Cutting corners causes horrible things to happen and proves that you are lazy and you want to watch the world burn. Then this new concept popped up! Life hacks! Life hacks are the things smart people do to save time and energy but are in no way the same thing as cutting corners.

Spring Cleaning Life Hacks:

• Before cleaning your refrigerator, do the ‘zombie sniff test’. I am not suggesting you find a zombie and have the zombie smell your skanky fridge, that is just not safe. The zombie would end up biting you and then drink milk out of the carton. What I suggest is that you sniff your fridge. Unless the fridge smells like a zombie storage unit, then you can put off cleaning a little longer.

• Leave cleaning supplies scattered throughout your home. When people stop by, you looks like they’ve interrupted you in the middle of cleaning. There is a downside to this, though. If you are constantly looking at unused cleaning supplies, they start getting smug. Then accusatory. Before long you will find yourself screaming at your dust buster to stop judging you.

• Recently, I read a brilliant cleaning life hack. You attach little scrubbers to an old pair of shoes and scrub the floor while you walk. Perfect. If I attached little scrubbers to my old shoes, and then attempted to walk on soapy soles, I would slip and fall within seconds. Then, because I’d be injured, someone else would have to do all the cleaning . By someone else, I mean Randy.

• Use your mini blinds like a mood ring. Remember mood rings? Apparently, my mood always made them turn green. But we aren’t talking about that, we’re talking about your disgusting mini blinds. Go look at the mini-blinds and then gauge your mood. Are they so dirty that your mood takes a downward swing? Does looking at your mini blinds make you feel hopeless and like everything you touch turns to shit? Do you feel like drinking bourbon and then drunk dialing old therapists after looking at your blinds? Do what I did. Take them down. Throw them away. Never ever buy new ones.

• There’s the putting a lazy Susan in your refrigerator hack. Which seems genius because when shit spills, the lazy Susan will be easier to remove than the fridge shelves. Also, why do we call them lazy Susans? That hardly seems fair to Susan. Why couldn’t it be a ‘saves some time, Susan’ or a ‘thing the kids will spin around until stuff falls off Susan’?

• Some tasks can be completely avoided by changing certain aspects about your self. For instance, it’s much easier to claim to be a person who ‘never wears jewelry’ than getting all the knots out of the necklaces.

Do you often feel uptight? Wouldn’t it be nice to be one of those women who not only claims to not care what anyone else thinks of them but actually one who doesn’t care what anyone thinks of them? Just do that! Stop caring what other people think about you. Are you basically a slob? Okay then! Live your life. Who cares what anyone thinks?

I have not achieved that level of freedom, however, I do adopt that attitude when it comes to my baseboards. I do not care how dusty they are. 

My best life hack for Spring cleaning will save you hours and hours. Do what I do. I can clean an entire room by closing a door.

This post is nothing more than a desperate effort to continue putting off all but the most basic of cleaning. I have been doing that for months now, y’all. I’m not even sure if my refrigerator would pass the zombie sniff test.

Guess it’s time to put on those rubber shoe scrubber slippers. Hope Randy has a weekend open.

(This post originally ran on Rubber Shoes in Hell.)

About the author: Michelle Poston Combs writes humorous and serious observations on life, menopause, anxiety, and marriage on her popular site, Rubber Shoes In Hell. She lives in Ohio with her husband and youngest son. She stands at the precipice of empty nest syndrome which she finds both terrifying and exhilarating. Michelle programs computers to pay the bills. She counters this soul sucking endeavor by contributing to best selling author Jen Mann’s anthology I Still Just Want To Pee Alone, HuffingtonPost, and Better After 50.
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