To some people, especially Neat Freaks, cleaning is Serious Business. They'll bust out the brooms, vacuums, etc. and clean to an extreme point, to go as far as going to clean other people's houses.
This is often a pregnancy trope in sitcoms; a woman displays nesting syndrome and becomes maidzilla during some unknown stage of pregnancy. Often Played for Laughs.
This trope is not limited to springtime.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Shinji Ikari Raising Project: In a Mythology Gag, Misato's apartment is an utter pigsty when Shinji is asked to go live with her by his parents. One look at the Trash of the Titans and Shinji immediately begins cleaning up and chiding Misato for letting it get that bad.
- Sgt. Frog: Keroro treats the Hinata family's annual New Year's Eve cleaning, like nearly everything else, like a major military operation.
- Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei: Chiri Kitsu, who goes to other people's houses to clean them and throw out questionable items, even if the owner of the house wanted to keep them.
- Toradora!: The male protagonist, Ryuuji, feels the need to clean other peoples' houses, and even the school bathroom.
Literature
- Adrian Mole: In Growing Pains, Adrian's mother suddenly has a mad cleaning fit the day before she gives birth to Rosie, which is highly out of character, since she is normally too feminist to do any housework.
- The House With a Clock in Its Walls: Book 9, The Tower At the End of the World, sees Jonathan and co. going through his house and giving it a massive cleaning, disposing of old rugs, furniture and other things that are worn out (they don't pitch everything though, since Jonathan's a packrat and keeps the interesting stuff, along with any furniture that looks more like an antique). In this case, it's justified — they're trying to find any signs of evil magic still lurking around, and clearing out the junk is a side benefit.
- Howl's Moving Castle, "Chapter Five: Which Is Far Too Full Of Washing"
- Lake Wobegon Days: Diane, who treats it like a military operation. The War On Dirt. It begins: "One fine Saturday morning, Diane opened her eyes and smelled something bad from under the blanket. Ed had been doing that a lot lately."
Live Action TV
- Friends: Monica would go on these binges, even washing stranger's cars parked on the street.
- Full House: To Danny Tanner, spring cleaning is like Christmas and he has the whole family help out.
Newspaper Comics
- FoxTrot: Andy is prone to fits of this (particularly when her mother is visiting) and dragoons the rest of the family into helping her.
- One strip shows that her mother also helps clean their house to help out, but all it does is make Andy feel inadequate (not helped that the kids are more than willing to let their grandmother do so).
Andy: Kids, we need to get the house cleaned before your grandmother arrives?
Peter: Why?
Andy: Because otherwise she'll take it on herself to do so, and we don't want that.
Peter: Says you.
Andy: I said, we don't want that!
Peter: Look, just because you have "issues"...
Jason: I let my room get extra messy on purpose.
- One strip shows that her mother also helps clean their house to help out, but all it does is make Andy feel inadequate (not helped that the kids are more than willing to let their grandmother do so).
Western Animation
- Dave the Barbarian
"IT'S TIME TO CLEAN THE CAAAAAAAAAAASTLE!!!!!
- Rocko's Modern Life: The show used this as part of the basis
for their Musical Episode.
- The premise of Winnie the Pooh: Springtime with Roo is Rabbit wanting to replace Easter with a Spring-Cleaning Day, and Tigger and Roo figuring out what's gotten him to act this way since last Easter.
