The origins of spring cleaning are probably connected with the arrival of spring which had people getting their summer clothes out and placing the cold weather clothes back into shelves. In tropical climes, this is not a necessity and one can be a pack rat for years accumulating stuff.
One advantage of renting and not owning a house is that there’s a forced cleaning out of stuff on every move. Still something that cannot be thrown out are books. Today we took the decision to throw away some old books and I felt quite awful about that. At every second hand book store I wonder why are people throwing away these books. Some have come from libraries, others still carry their previous owner’s name. Presumably some have been sold as part of a spring cleaning, some on moving away or even death. The stories behind the copies may be sometimes better than the contents of the book themselves. How’s that for a plot – The Adventures of Billy the Book.