Early summer seems to be in close tandem with spring this year. My miniature daffies are still in full bloom and the summer roses are already in bud.

It's almost like the end of April is like mid/late May. Very rarely, in the northern Highlands, do we have temperatures in the late teens in April, but this year we've had a spell of them. And absolutely no light 'April showers' - it's either been a short downpour, or nothing at all! I even had to water the raised beds & tubs because the ground was so dry. I don't usually look out the garden hose until the beginning of June!

So I've had to get a shift on to get some spring cleaning done - before it's too late!

Last year my attempts at spring cleaning verged on the pathetic. I seemed to have been indifferent to the build up of dirt!

However, this year, I set my sights on emptying and cleaning not only the kitchen drawers & cabinets, but also the bathroom ones.

I had allocated one day for the kitchen (2 days tops) and half a day for the bathroom.

One week on + 4 black rubble sacks later, I'd reorganised & cleaned the kitchen to within an inch of its life.

By the following week - now getting bored and leaking enthusiasm from every pore - I reluctantly finished the bathroom too.

In the kitchen & bathroom, I was ruthless. If I didn't know what something was for, or hadn't used it in 24 months, it was binned. 

At the back of my herbs and spices cupboard, I found 4 unopened wee bottles of whole cloves. In fact, there were many duplicates, triplicates and, apparently, quadruplicates of stuff! That sorted, I should now be able to open the cupboard without all the jars tsunami-ing towards me!

And what's with all the containers of 1p and 2p coins lurking in drawers and behind things on the worktop? I should count them out, fill some £1 coin bags and take them to the bank. But I've gone a bit jaded now with all that cleaning, so much so, that I can't rely on my brain being able to count up to 50, let alone 100!

Still, I'm rather pleased with myself. And now there's more space to collect and stash some more vintage china, methinks.

I'm just so happy that I don't aspire to a larger kitchen, with even more cabinets to clean out. It's just so easy to accumulate stuff, isn't it?

For instance, I have a big pine wardrobe with in excess of 20 summer tops. But I know how unlikely it is to have 20 super-hot summer days, this far north. 

Last year I almost wore a floaty sundress that I'd bought for an exceedingly hot day. There was one quite hot day, but I decided to leave it for an even hotter one. But, alas, it never came!

Also, it's lime green - a brave choice for an older woman, and what if my style is not lime green and floaty this year? 

IF, I'd been spring cleaning my wardrobe this year, my hand might have lingered on its hanger. Indecision. Keep it, or not? I'll just see how this summer pans out & reconsider the lime green option then.

Hebe-the-dog and Hector-the-pup have remained unimpressed by the progress in the kitchen - no toys were unearthed, and no stale stray biscuits were uncovered.

So while I was downstairs in the kitchen filling rubble sacks, they were upstairs scooting around the livingroom. When I went upstairs for a coffee break, all my retrained eyes could see was a layer of dog hairs stuck in the carpet and woven into the mats. And when I nonchalantly scraped the fireside rug with my rubber-soled slippers, I managed to gather up mounds of tumbleweed dog hairs. I assume that if I continued doing this over weekly periods, I would have enough to insulate my garden shed!

But sometimes I have to tell myself that cleaning is a thankless never-ending chore, because even if my cottage was spotless, I would absolutely never have any callers then. Invariably, folk arrive when I'm researching stuff with books teetering everywhere, or I'm working on artwork with pastels rolling about everywhere, and dirty dishes are in tottering piles on the kitchen worktop, and wet clothes are drying round the fire in limp rows.

And don't even ask me about the state of my windows. I read somewhere that clean windows allow your outlook - on everything - to be clearer. However, upstairs I have large tilt-and-turn windows. They are super-scary, 'cos when you push them out, and just before they turn-and-tilt (ie when they're horizontal), I always think they're going to snap off their runners and end up in bits in the garden.

And then, as Aesop might ask: how will I fill the gaping hole? I've already used up all the heavy-duty rubble sacks!

Moral: Be careful not to clean too much. And keep some rubble sacks for just-in-case scenarios!

I'm exhausted. Time to chill.

: )