30 March 1909: Spring Cleaning the City

On this day, the following editorial ran in the Athens Banner:

In following years, with support from the Athens Women's Club and other civic organizations, an annual Clean Up Week was held in Athens. People were encouraged to clean around their homes and businesses, and the city would arrange to make sure all the trash was picked up the following week. 

Typically held in late March or early April, Clean Up Weeks were held around the nation, often in association with women's clubs, which were a growing force during the progressive era. A space that was visibly tidy and neat indicated that it was owned or occupied by people who were also tidy and neat, and therefore healthy, both physically and morally. 

Later Banner editorials advised not just straightening up any accumulated trash or unkempt bushes on one's property, but also clearing out closets, cleaning out cellars, adding fresh lime beneath houses, and painting or white washing fences, porches, or other outbuildings. 

Clean Up Weeks put "cleanliness is next to godliness" on a city-wide scale, with a great focus on insect eradication, especially flies, as part of a way to keep the city healthy and free of contagious disease as the city's population grew.

Learn More:

• Athens Banner, January - December 1909 on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs by J. A. Simpson in the Reference collection.
• A History of Public Health in Georgia, 1733-1950 by T. F. Abercrombie in the Heritage collection.
• Everyday Life Through the Ages by Michael Worth Davison in the general collection.
• Clean It Fast, Clean It Right by Jeff Bredenberg in the general collection.
• The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters by Rose George in the general collection. 
• The Natural History of Flies by Harold Oldroyd via PINES.
• Cleaning Nature Naturally by Kathlyn Gay in the general collection. 
• The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink by Robert D. Morris in the general collection.
• How to Clean Practically Anything by Marjorie Florman and Monte Florman in the Reference collection.
• Plague: A Story of Science, Rivalry, and the Scourge That Won't Go Away by Edward Marriott in the general collection.
• Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical by Anthony Bourdain via PINES.
• Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan in the general collection.
• Complete Trash: The Best Way to Get Rid of Practically Everything Around the House by Norm Crampton in the general collection.