March is here and you know what that means. It’s time to go through your house and spring clean. I actually started this early this year as I had a lot of stuff “junk” that I needed to clean up, donate, or sell. When you live in a house for more than 5 years I feel like you really start to accumulate way too much stuff. So let’s spring clean and figure out where to begin.
Spring Cleaning Tips
Start off with a big project to get you going – I began in August when my daughter left for college. When she left, my son decided he was taking her room (which is a second master suite) and she would move into one of the smaller rooms. This meant we would be packing up two of the rooms in the house and switching them. So we went through everything. All the clothes, closet items, and everything in both rooms. This was a huge job, but we had a goal and a purpose so it made it a little easier to deal with. My son was happy with his room once it was put back together. My daughter was not as happy with her smaller room, but she was very happy to be off at college. With one major project marked off my list, I was feeling pretty productive and ready to keep going on my list.
Set aside a “working weekend” for the whole family. You can get so much more done with 4 or 5 people than you can by yourself. Every 6 weeks or a time frame of your choice, set aside a “working weekend.” Let the family members know at the beginning of the week that this weekend you will set aside a certain amount of time on Saturday and Sunday to work on the the house clearing out clutter. Have a list planned ahead of time for them to do on their own and some things to do with the group as a whole. They need to have both kinds of tasks so that you don’t have to guide them at every tasks so you can get some work done too. Things will go a lot smoother that way.
Continue to declutter as you have time. Choose smaller tasks to do on your busier days. Cleaning out a junk drawer or your pantry are all things that need to be done. Sometimes these tasks may take as little as 15 minutes. You can choose to do these things on days where you don’t have big blocks of time to set aside, but you still want to get something accomplished. All of it needs to get done so use your time wisely.
Make sure items get out of the house immediately. Once you have sorted your items as donation, trash, or sell make sure you take them to the appropriate place right away. You have worked so hard to declutter, you don’t want the boxes to stick around taking up room in your house. What a great feeling to get all of this out of your house. What a big difference this will make.
Have a list with your “big picture” goals. What areas do you want to tackle? Make sure you are working in your spare time to get to all the areas you can in a timely manner. Use your bigger blocks of time for the larger projects and do smaller projects as time allows.
I hope you are having some nice spring weather in your area and you are getting motivated to tackle some projects that have been on your mind for too long.
Yours Truly,
Jenn
