Springtime is here and that means it’s time to SPRING CLEAN! Yay! Nothing is more refreshing than clearing out the old and unused and just resetting the entire tone in your house.

Spring cleaning is more than just doing a deep clean on your home, but is a time to go through things that don’t have a purpose anymore. Not to mention a great time to have a garage sale for all those unneeded items.

While the thought of deep cleaning may start to ramp up your anxiety – DON’T LET IT. If you don’t know where to start, check out my Tips for Cleaning & Maintaining Your House. This can help you start the process of cleaning without it feeling overwhelming. However, the purpose of this post is to help reduce the clutter and ultimately maintain it. When cleaning rooms, focus more on closets, drawers, pantries, under the sinks, etc. Go into the process with these methods in mind:

Everything needs a place – One of the biggest things is making sure all of your things have a home. Whether it’s on a bookshelf or in a cabinet. Every item in your house should have a place to go. This helps organize your house as well as maintain any unnecessary clutter. If you place blankets in a basket, fill it with blankets you love and donate or discard any blankets that don’t fit. This will help you minimize having an overabundance of an item. The same goes got kids’ toys, clothes in your closet, etc.

Remove duplicates – You do not need 2 face washes because chances are, you’re really only using 1. And this isn’t talking about those that buy the same product in multiple quantities for backup. This is specifically for those who tried out 7 different curling cremes to decide that they only liked one and the rest are sitting under the bathroom sink. Let them go, you’re not interested in them and you know it. The average woman uses 12 beauty products, multiply that by 2 for the version you’ve tried but didn’t finish, and that’s 24 items of unnecessary clutter.

The 6-month rule – The easiest way to jump-start some massive decluttering is the 6-month rule. If you haven’t used it, worn it, or touched it in 6 months…Get rid of it. Simple as that. There’s no need to keep things ‘just in case’ because if you wanted to by now, you would have. For items such as books and movies that you wouldn’t normally use within 6 months, focus on keeping your favorites and donating the ones you can part with.

Checklist Please!

Using the Room by Room Checklist helps focus on specific rooms and not the whole house allowing you to go through every room and remove the most unnecessary items.

Create sorting piles of cluttering items by:

• Trash – Things to throw away.
• Donate – Things to give away such as blankets, clothes, toys, and gently used items.
• Recycle – Recycle out damaged books, old papers, plastic and old electronics appropriately.

Once your house is decluttered and organized remember that to maintain it, do not add to it. Stop binge shopping at HomeGoods and dumping unnecessary clutter into your home that you’ll be required to clean up. A good rule to go by if you’re wanting to add something new to the house is for everything item you bring home, an equal amount must leave.

Removing clutter will help reduce stress, promote better sleep, and help decrease overstimulation.

By no means am I a minimalist, but less is more. The less you have to clean up, the more time you get with your family. Less clutter, more snuggles. ❤️

XOXO – A Busy Mama