Day Two Hundred Forty-Seven: Fall Backwards Homekeeping

It's officially fall and that means time to whip out Martha's Fall Homekeeping list.  Apparently Miss Fall is a much less-demanding madam than Mrs. Spring...whose list is quite a bit longer.

Besides the obvious items (like switching out warm-weather bedding, clothing & rugs for cool-weather items), Martha also suggests one: clean gutters, outdoor furniture, scrub porch ceilings, walls, floors, decks, patios, the driveway, and walkways.

Wait:  the driveway?!?  Really?

Thankfully I don't have a proper driveway (thank you neighborhood alleyway), so I decided to scrub my porch yesterday.  I thought this would mean dusting some cobwebs and sweeping.  Little did I know the trim on my porch was covered in dirt and mildew:

:insert shudder:

To clean this mess, I had to make-friendly with the bleach, water and soap, which is quite a slippery combination.  I only fell once...and I'm pretty sure none of my neighbors noticed.

After expending much, much more elbow-grease than I was anticipating, my windows look like so:

:sigh of relief:

Unfortunately my gleaming white trim made the rockers on my front porch look pathetic, so I had to scrub those too.  Before:  

After:

Whew.  All done.  Now that it's all clean, I'm off to cast disapproving looks at people with dirty driveways.