The sky is blue, the flowers are in full bloom and the days are getting longer. It’s a time of year that makes your heart sing. O thou with dewy locks – O Spring!
And with spring comes the traditional spring clean. Or at least it used to. Nowadays, fewer people seem to do a ‘spring clean’ in spring. The term’s now synonymous with pretty much any kind of tidying or cleaning done anywhere and at any time of the year.
But where does the term come from and why was spring considered the ideal time to clean in the first place?
One theory traces it back to the ancient Jewish tradition of cleansing the home in preparation for Passover. It’s a tradition that seems to have taken on even wider practical significance in the UK and the USA, where wet and cold winters are the norm. Winter meant long periods with the house shut tight, heated by oil, coal or wood – making for a dusty dingy feel by the time late March rolled around. Before the advent of the modern vacuum, spring marked the earliest time windows and doors could be opened up for long enough periods to give places a proper dusting.
With modern central heated homes making cleaning easy at any time of the year, you might think the days of the traditional ‘spring clean’ are well and truly over. But they shouldn’t be. Modern double-glazed houses are effectively air tight containers, trapping in the stale chemical odour of the myriad cleaning products we rely on all year long. What’s more, with double-glazing comes the threat of damp – by spring time, homes are crying out for a bit of fresh air!
In many ways we need the tradition of the spring clean now more than ever. We consume more, own more stuff, which falls out of fashion more quickly, and consequently we have more clutter.
So with spring here, it’s time for a bit of a blitz – time to get rid of everything from old books you’ll never read again to furniture you can no longer stand the sight of.
But rather than throwing things away, why not turn spring cleaning into spring savings? Sell some of that old stuff on ebay and get a great deal on postage with DHL Servicepoint. Put some of those old unwatched DVDs up on Amazon Marketplace, or let someone get some use out of that old sofa by putting it up on Freecycle? You can even pop into your local Safestore and put valuable items in storage while you have a big clear out. While you’re there, kill two birds with one stone – there’s a DHL Servicepoint in every Safestore, giving you the perfect opportunity to securely ship the stuff you’ve sold online!
With DHL Servicepoint spring is the time to make your house blossom!
For more information on DHL Servicepoint www.dhlservicepoint.co.uk