On a clear day...

When we moved into this house 31 years ago, I gave little thought to the clear-ness of the windows. There were a lot of windows--37 plus two doors and two transoms. For the most part, they were original to the house, circa 1918. Lots of panes and wavy glass. They weren't airtight, however, and after a couple years watching the drapes blow in the winter when the windows were closed, we had storm windows attached.

At that point, all semblance of cleaning the windows--what semblance there had been was slight--went literally, out the window. We would rinse them off with a high power washer every so often, but other than that, the years built up, I'm sorry to say.

Until this summer when I got some sort of strange bee in my bonnet and decided they needed to be professionally cleaned. I got references and started the hunt. Found out that because the windows are so large (54 inches by 6 feet), it would require a two-man crew and scaffolding for the north, or street side. Our most earnest window cleaner didn't have that equipment. He tried to find someone who did, even calling into the Metroplex. Someone is bound to exist who does this sort of thing, but we didn't stumble upon them.

So I decided on a compromise: those windows he could reach via ladder, all of the downstairs and those over the two porches, he would do. And so began a light-revelation in our house.

Last Saturday, he and his crew cleaned the front windows, upstairs and down. I had no idea they were so dirty until I saw them so clean. Amazing. Thursday, he'll finish the job and light will shoot from front to back.

Should have done it years ago--and now I've no excuse not to do it at least annually.