When everything is a mess and life feels out of wack, it’s time to tidy up. With spring on its way, the yearly spring cleaning wave is upon us. The season is coming quickly and at a busy time, but it is a necessary chore. Spending many tedious hours cleaning out old clothes, scrubbing spots, vacuuming and various other tasks that come with a clean space can feel time consuming and pointless. However, with the right mindset, you will find it empowering.
1. Start small: When it comes to cleaning, getting started is half the battle. If you’re not driven, you will most likely put it off for as long as possible. When this happens, you’ve got to start small. Go through a junk drawer or shuffle through socks and underwear. Creating a positive environment will help you keep your sanity as you sort through your 100 unpaired socks and discard random dead batteries. Turn on some tunes, listen to a podcast or have a show going on in the background. Just take things one step at a time.
2. Donation time: You’ve gone through the little smaller areas of your closet; now it’s time to tackle the bigger ones. If you haven’t sorted your closet in a while, take everything out. Go through it Marie Kondo style: only keep the things that make you feel good. If it doesn’t “spark joy,” get rid of it. Once you’re left with more space and a few bags of slightly used items, you have the opportunity to be generous as well. Donating is a great way to get those items out, while also helping the environment and community, allowing someone else to love the items. Also, if you could use some cash, there are a lot of resources to resell your barely worn items, such as apps like Letgo, Poshmark and OfferUp.
3. Keepsakes and knick-knacks: After getting rid of clothes and various other things, rummage through old pictures and souvenirs. This part of cleaning can be more enjoyable as you remember why you kept those items and look back on all that you’ve done. Keep the memories, but if you don’t need the item, let it go.
4. Squeaky clean: Once everything has been examined, analyzed and sorted, hopefully, you can finally see your floor, but it still needs to be cleaned. Dust turns to sparkle, dirt turns to glitter and everything feels fresh again. This can be the hardest part, but if you dance like you’re Selena Gomez with Drew Seeley in Another Cinderella Story when Mary cleans her bedroom, cleaning can be much more enjoyable.
5. Organize: For the extra neat people, this is the best part. Presentation is everything, so make the space nice. After all of your hard work, this is when you put on the finishing touches. Add flare, and make the room your own. Display the goods that made you smile or mean a lot to you; give life back to the area.
Following the many hours of taking out, putting back up and cleaning every possible corner, you’ve earned a beautiful and fresh area that makes you feel good and work diligently, making all of your hard work worth it.