Knotty Pines Academy: Holy Week

This week is Spring break for our county school system but here at the Academy it is Holy week. You can see a listing of our plans for the week here.

"Hebrew women spent the first part of the week before Passover thoroughly cleaning their homes in preparation for that feast. The tradition continues in the homes of Christians as we make ready our homes for the feast of feasts, the celebration of Christ's victory over sin and death... In Catholic homes, spring cleaning is really Easter cleaning, and accomplishing it at this time of the year will enable you to have your home noticeably sparkling and fresh for Easter. You want to eliminate every speck of dust and dirt from your home so that it will reflect, hopefully, the state of our souls after all your Lenten mortifications and prayers" The Forty Days of Lent for the Christian Family by T. Zepeda

Our whole family started this wonderful tradition a couple years ago. Today we completed Day-1 of our deep cleaning schedule for the whole of upstairs. We started roughly around 9 am and finished around 5 pm. Upon finishing we had three bags of clothes and three bags of toys for charity and four bags of trash! We are not a family of big consumers, but still it never ceases to amaze me just how much *stuff* we all can accumulate in just ONE year!!

The kids surprise me every year with their generous spirits and even though they acknowledge it is difficult to give away certain things at the moment, they feel so much better after wards, and their attitudes show it during the rest of the week.

There are sooo many links out there for Spring cleaning, you can even take a quiz to see what group you might fall into when it comes to housecleaning. One of our favorite traditional read alouds for this week has become All of A Kind Family. It gets us motivated to do a good job cleaning ;-)

For those that are just wondering what we do here at the Academy, I will post a copy of our checklist for each day......

'Upstairs Checklist' for each room

[ ] Clean all walls, baseboards, doors, door frames and sills

[ ] Vacuum under all furniture and polish wood

[ ] Wash all winter bed linens including comforters and bed ruffles

[ ] Organize linen and game closets

[ ] Put up all fall/winter clothes & get down all spring/summer clothing from attic

[ ] Clean and organize all clothing closets and chest of drawers

[ ] Collect all unused toys, clothing and shoes for SVP charity

[ ] Dust and clean all decorative ornaments on shelves and pictures on the walls

[ ] Dust and wash all window shades, blinds and curtains

[ ] Wash all windows and mirrors