Spring Cleaning 2016
Matt Seinberg

It's that time of year, again. The grass is turning green and the house may be too. Guess what that means; it's time to get cleaning!

I hired a new landscaping company this year.

The one from last year royally pissed me off. They didn't do a very good job of the fall clean up; when I sent a note along with my final payment to the office, no one bothered to call and follow up with me.

It was about three weeks later that I finally heard from one of the owners, Pete. He gave me nothing but excuses why he hadn't called me. All I'm thinking is, "You haven't apologized for the lousy job and haven't offered me any sort of credit. I'm done with your company."

He said he was going to send me a new contract and "make up to me" in the future for what I said was a lousy fall cleanup. I said you can send it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to sign it.

One of my friends at work told me he's had the same landscaper for 8 years, and was very happy with his work. When he told me what he was paying, I was stunned. His landscaper is at least $800 less than what I was paying and he was getting the full service treatment.

Full service includes pruning and trimming twice a year, all needed chemical applications, spring and fall cleanups and lawn seeding twice a season as well. He wasn't nickel and diming his customers, as was my old company.

I finally had him come by. He gave me the same price as my friend. As it turns out, he signed up three other people from work and two other neighbours from one of our coworkers as well.

Later that week, I got a message from the now former landscaper, asking to please send back the signed contract. I left them a message after hours, on purpose, stating that I no longer needed their services. They didn't call me back, again.

The new landscaper came several weeks later on a Wednesday and did the spring cleanup. The next day, I saw the truck from the former company drive by, slow down and leave. I guess they saw how great the lawn looked. Maybe they didn’t understand their services were no longer required.

The other part of spring-cleaning takes place indoors.

We haven't done anything, yet, other than move the winter coats from upstairs to downstairs. I usually like to take the mattress and box spring off the frame, to vacuum underneath and clean the headboard. That hasn't happened yet.

I'd truly love to rip apart the kid’s rooms. They're both messy and smelly. I'm not quite sure how to rid the rooms of those odours, other than use a whole lot of Febreze in them.

I love the commercial on television where the Mom goes into the messy son's room and remarks how bad it smells; the kid hadn't noticed it. Then she proceeds to use Febreze in there and, miracle of miracles, the room smells good enough to have his friends over.

Yeah, right.

My daughters are slobs.

Both of my kids are slobs. There is always some sort of mess on the floor, dirty laundry all over; they put nothing away, ever. If they do laundry, they'll let it sit in the basket and just pick clean clothes, as needed.

My rule is easy; if it's not put away within one day, I dump it out of the basket and onto their beds. Now they have to put it away. No matter how many times I tell them to do it, they don't listen.

The question my wife and I always ask ourselves is why did we have kids? Why didn't we just get more cats?