With the world on lockdown, you’ll likely be spending a lot more time in your home. And you might discover you don’t like what you see. We all know that life gets in the way sometimes and maintaining a showroom style home probably isn’t on the cards.
Giving your home a deep clean once a year can help you to keep it tidy for the rest of the year. If you’re struggling with excess clutter, it can be harder to stay on top of the weekly cleaning. And soon, your monthly cleaning becomes too much to handle. Before long, you’re running just to stay in the same place.
If you want to break the cycle, spring cleaning is a great way to hit refresh. Follow these 7 tips to prepare for spring cleaning in the best possible way. If you’re looking for more inspiration, you can find further tips from YourRepair.
Keep, donate, sell or throw away
The first obstacle you need to overcome is the clutter. You can’t keep on top of cleaning when your home is cluttered. It’s time to organise your things so that everything has a place. And when everything has a place, it’s easier to keep your home clean.
Create four piles in each room. Decide what you want to keep, donate, sell or throw away. It can be difficult to part with some items. You will no doubt come up against some items that you don’t want to part with because they might come in useful in the future. Put all of these items in a box and hide it away. If you haven’t touched them in 6 months, you know you’re probably not going to need them any time soon and can revisit your decision to sell, donate or throw them away.
Tackle one room at a time
Trying to spring clean your whole house at once will only overwhelm you. Break down your home into rooms or zones and tackle a different one each day. This will make your spring cleaning more manageable and allow you to see the progress sweep through your home.
If it helps you, try creating lists of what you want to achieve in each room. You’ll have a greater sense of achievement as you rush through your list and tick off your goals.
Get the whole family involved
You didn’t make all of the mess, so don’t feel you have to tackle this alone. No one likes to get roped into cleaning, but it can be more fun if you tackle it together. And this also means that you’ll get to enjoy the results at the end. By getting the whole family involved in cleaning, you can make them appreciate what goes into keeping the home clean. At the very least, every member of your household should be responsible for decluttering their own room, if they are old enough to do so.
Create a cleaning playlist
Everything goes faster when you put it to music. Put together a list of your favourite cheesy 80s cleaning montage tracks, or make the most of pre-made playlists on streaming services like Spotify. You could even make the time a little more interesting by listening to your favourite podcast while you clean. Music is better than leaving the TV on in the background as you’re less likely to be distracted.
Create rewards for milestones
As mentioned above, you’re not going to get your spring cleaning completed in one day. Spread it out over a few weeks and set yourself milestones. Giving yourself small rewards for reaching your goals will help to keep you on track. When you’re done cleaning the bathrooms in your home, you could splash out on some new towels to complete the look.
Or when you’re done deep cleaning the kitchen, treat yourself to a delicious takeaway so you don’t have to ruin all of your hard work.
Adjust your expectations
If you’re unhappy with the home that is underneath all of the clutter and dirt, you’re not going to be miraculously overwhelmed just because it’s clean. Adjust your expectations and don’t get sucked into the Instagram world of perfect homes. Cleaning influencers often have incredible homes to start with, so don’t beat yourself up if you aren’t living in a pristine mansion at the end of it. Once you’re done cleaning, you might then decide to make a list of home improvements to tackle now you have a clean canvas to work with.
Make it a habit
The less you keep on top of things throughout the year, the more you’ll have to do when you’re spring cleaning. By keeping on top of tasks and making it a weekly habit to do a little bit of cleaning, you’ll soon discover that the housework doesn’t pile up as much. It’s also much easier to keep your home clean if you stay on top of the clutter, so make it a habit to donate, sell or throw away items when you no longer need them.
