By far the most commonly expressed question in recent weeks: where did summer go?
It’s all too familiar. After three months of summertime weather, barbecues, baseball games and other fun slips through our fingers we wind up in this kind of in-between. Not fall, but not quite summer anymore. Especially with local kids headed back to school today. The official autumnal equinox will come much later — Sept. 23 — long after shorts and sandals are likely pushed to the back of the closet.
The onset of cooler-than-expected weather meant we would don jeans and sweatshirts for the first time ever to our annual outing to the Iowa State Fair. (As it turns out, I prefer that to sweating through a tank top and shorts.) The air conditioner has been turned off in favor of open windows and cool breezes and we’ve started eyeing some crockpot recipes, because that’s what we do in the Midwest.
Somehow all of the summer fun cumulated into a somewhat sad, but purposeful existence for me on Saturday. While we’ve spent the last several months living it up summertime style, I realized we’ve also had a sort of hotel presence inside our own home. We spent more time on the patio than in the family room, more time by the grill than the stove, rushed from pools to parties and otherwise hurried through our routines in every other area of the house.
So yes, you guessed it — cleaning day at the Casa de Pelzer. Now I would like to be clear on a few things. Both my husband and I are cleanly people. I think that’s one of the reasons we just celebrated another wedding anniversary. He doesn’t drive me crazy — in this regard — and he’s rather helpful in many areas of the household.
Furthermore, I love our home. We have lots of space inside and out, and thanks to some work by far more talented individuals than ourselves, it’s up-to-date and very comfortable. We are also never, ever moving.
My biggest beef with our house is routine deep cleaning. I can keep a countertop consistently clean and free of clutter for weeks on end, but do I want to scrub that sucker down and assure it’s sterile? Not really.
Moreover, it seems like a good idea to acquire a home with three toilets until it comes time to clean three toilets. By the end of this nasty job (and by the way — male species — you can do better.) I’m longing for the one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment I enjoyed back in college.
On this particular day my husband was tearing down and packing away our pool and doing other outside work I’d been hounding him about. While I like to plant and maintain a small number outside jobs, I’m not necessarily fond of outside work. As a regular traveler, the hubby can sometimes fall behind on upkeep — hence the nagging.
I feel much more content cleaning and organizing when my spouse is also busy laboring, say compared to lying on the coach watching golf. It usually works out better for him, too. I once had a friend who had a sign posted in her home, “If mamma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” I’ve liked the expression ever since.
While we do expect our kids to contribute to these household duties, there are some things that just have to be done by an adult. I spent a good share of my day going through old products like lotions, hair products, medicines and so forth. The truth is our entire family should have godlike skin and hair with the number of products we have on hand. Getting everything organized and current felt good.
Somehow by wiping down baseboards and shelves and packing away beach towels and water goggles I feel slightly more prepared for the busy season fall will usher in. If you’ve been meaning to visit us, I suggest now. The house is spick and span — for the time being.
Contact Abigail Pelzer at 641-792-3121 ext. 6530 or apelzer@newtondailynews.com