Redd up

I had always thought that 'redd up' (to clean or straighten in Pittsburgheese) was a local slang. I never knew its orgin. It is used widely in the Greater Pittsburgh (PA) area.

I'm from the mountains of West Virginia but I'd never heard this term. However, it says here...

RED UP, REDDING UP, RID UP -- to ready or to clean up. "We went to 'redding up' (after a strong wind had lifed the roof, sending moss and dried chinking mud down on the floor). From "Smoky Mountain Voices: A Lexicon of Southern Appalachian Speech Based on the Research of Horace Kephart," edited by Harold J. Farwell Jr., and J. Karl Nicholas (University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky., 1993).