The rain came out of nowhere.
One minute, we were sweeping the garage. The next, thunder cracked so loud that my little cousin dropped the broom and screamed like she saw a ghost. Within minutes, the skies broke open like they had been waiting all week to cry.
We ran inside, laughing, soaked, and still holding cleaning supplies.
“Guess the garage is postponed,” I said, shaking water from my sleeves.
But Mom had other plans. “Then we clean the inside,” she declared, already grabbing a mop.
I never expected the living room to become a party.
It started simple—Mom asked me to help her clean the ceiling fan. That one chore turned into dusting the bookshelves, which led to vacuuming behind the couch, which led to my brother pulling every cushion off to “check for snacks.” Within an hour, our entire living room looked like a furniture yard sale.
“You know what this means, right?” Mom said, arms crossed with a smirk.
“Let me guess,” I said. “It’s now a family project?”
“Bingo.”
Soon the whole house was involved. My cousin Mia showed up with a mop and a jug of iced pineapple-ginger punch. My auntie D brought her famous cornbread muffins “for energy,” and my uncle cranked up the old stereo and said, “If I’m gonna help, I need my soundtrack.”
When Grandma called for a “garden cleanup,” I assumed she meant she needed help trimming hedges or pulling weeds. I was wrong.
I arrived to find half the family in the backyard, wearing old clothes, rubber gloves, and suspiciously excited expressions.
“We’re cleaning everything,” Grandma declared, hands on her hips. “Shed, tools, pots, porch, souls if we have time.”
Someone handed me a sponge. Someone else passed me a fizzy lemonade. And like that, I was conscripted into what Grandma called the “Backyard Revival.”
Saturday morning rolled in with birds chirping and my mom banging a pot lid against the counter like she was summoning an army.
I groaned into my pillow. “Why are you like this?”
She yelled from the kitchen, cheerful and dangerous: “It’s cleaning day, baby! Let’s make this house shine and our stomachs sing!”
I peeked out of my blanket and immediately regretted it. Sunlight hit my face like judgment. Still, the smell of fried dumplings and cinnamon tea managed to drag me out of bed. If I was going to suffer, I might as well do it with a full stomach.
It started with a cobweb in the corner of the hallway.
One little thread, shining in the sunlight like it was proud of itself. I was reaching for it with a broom when my cousin Tariq walked in and wrinkled his nose.
“You cleaning today?” he asked, like I was about to commit a crime.
I leaned on the broom dramatically. “I’m trying. This house hasn’t seen a deep clean since the family BBQ two months ago. I still smell hot links in the couch cushions.”
Tariq nodded. “You need backup.”
Within thirty minutes, three more cousins arrived—Deja with her wireless speaker, Malik with his mop bucket, and Shae carrying a giant jug of her famous coconut punch like a peace offering to the Cleaning Gods.
I didn’t mean to turn my kitchen upside down.
It all started when I opened the pantry and a half-empty bag of rice spilled out like it had been waiting years for its freedom. I stared at it, sighed, and said to myself, “Okay, today’s the day.”
I was going to clean the pantry.
Not just tidy it. Not the “slide a few boxes around and pretend” kind. I meant a full-out purge, scrub, label, and deep-organize session. The kind of cleaning that unearths cans from the previous decade and mysterious sauces in languages I can’t read.
I tied my satin scarf around my head, turned on my “R&B Cleaning Queens” playlist, and sent a message in the family group chat:
Me: Pantry overhaul. Come help or come eat. Or both.
Jessa hated clutter, but she loved her grandmother’s house.
The tiny cottage always smelled like lavender, cinnamon, and something fried. Today, though, it smelled like... lemon cleaner and old memories. Jessa stood in the living room with her sleeves rolled up and her curls tied in a puff. Beside her, her cousins, aunties, and siblings shuffled through old magazines, photo albums, and half-filled tea tins.
It was cleaning day—not the regular kind. It was the once-every-few-years deep clean. The kind where you find baby photos, forgotten candy in drawers, and clothes that still held the warmth of someone no longer around.
“Okay, okay,” Aunt Mara called out, clapping her hands. “We’re not here to cry over onion jars. We’re here to clean, then eat, then laugh.”
The first light of dawn barely touched the edges of the Whispering Woods as my family—my sister Kaela, my younger brother Rami, and our cous...