Clutter Video Tip: How to Spring Clean

What exactly is spring cleaning anyway? Is it a cleaning list with specific tasks like oven cleaning that you have to check off? Or does it go beyond getting your home clean? In this video I discuss how to clean your house and outdoor spaces on a schedule that works for YOU. Following these spring cleaning tips will help you refresh your home and your outlook! 😉

(Click here to watch on YouTube if you can’t see the embedded player. Or watch the video at http://bit.ly/TCDSpring.)

Transcript:

Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, and today’s Clutter Video Tip is about spring cleaning. I’m here outside; I was really inspired to be out here with the butterflies and the bees. It is a gorgeous day, and I thought we would talk about the expectations we have around this time of year with the spring cleaning chores. You know, the British writer Katharine Whitehorn once said, “Spring makes everything look filthy.” And that might be true for you, or it might not. You may have great cleaning habits that keep your house looking pretty good throughout the year. Or, there might be certain areas of your home that do look more filthy, like the outdoors, your garage, or in my case, my patio. I actually kind of enjoy scrubbing my patio furniture down and scrubbing the patio and the walls and getting it freshened up and ready to spend more time outside. So, that’s really rewarding for me. But if you have some kind of spring cleaning checklist in front of you of chores that make you feel inadequate, like taking all your drapes down and taking them to the dry cleaner, if they don’t look dirty to you and that doesn’t make sense to you, don’t feel like you have to do that. There’s no arbitrary rules about all of this. It’s about what makes sense for you and your family and helps you enjoy your house more.

Here are a few organizing projects that are really small, that are easy to accomplish, that will help you enjoy spring more. One is to clear the deadwood out of your pantry in the kitchen and in your refrigerator. You can get ready for all that Spring and Summer produce that’s going to be coming and get rid of all those stale holiday items from gift baskets that you never are going to eat, and you can see a video actually about refrigerators that we’ve done before, and I’ve got the link for you on the screen here. (Update August, 2016: We apologize for the missing link in the video. Please click here to see the video.)

Also, if you’re going to spend more time outdoors, you might want to check your bathroom for your first aid kit and make sure there aren’t expired items in there. Make sure you have plenty of Band-Aids for everybody, and also your sun screen – it’s very important, as they do say you have to replace that once a year.

And of course, your home office is another place that is kind of a natural for Springtime. It’s tax season, and it makes sense to archive one of the years of files that are already in your reference file drawer that you can move to a more archived out-of-the-way location and kind of do that shift once a year at tax time.

And finally, your closet makes a lot of sense this time of year. You may be moving in some seasonal clothing like shorts instead of parkas. And especially if you have children, it’s a good idea to go through that. Make sure you see what still fits from last year, what else you might need to buy, and it is a really straightforward, necessary chore that you need to do in the spring. If you want some help with that, we have our Simple Division garment organizers that you can use to organize sections of clothing on the clothing rod and maybe even make it easier for that next seasonal switch-out. You can label them spring and Summer and Winter if you like, or even by sizes, or if you’re in a weight loss situation, you might label the sections “too big” / “too small.” Whatever makes sense for you.

See you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.

You may have been searching for spring cleaning project ideas or getting ready for summer.

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