It’s SPRING time! We welcome in longer days, warmer nights and the smell of flowers blooming. All this new life and freshness can make you feel like bouncing into decluttering and cleaning your home, either to get ready to sell or to simply enjoy yourself. To help you get into action, we’ve put together 4 tips to help you spring into cleaning!
Spring into Cleaning
Spring is renowned for being the best time of year to sell a property. When Spring comes along, it can make us feel happier, more energised and feeling like we want to get in and sort our homes, declutter, and of course clean!
Spring cleaning has a number of benefits – it can improve your health and strengthen your immune system (yes, a clean house can actually help do this), boost your mood thereby reducing stress and depression, and help to avoid injuries.
Spring cleaning can make your home feel fresh and alive, so if you’re planning on selling your property or just wish to enjoy your ‘fresh, clean’ home, it makes sense that now is a good time to do it.
To inspire you into action, we’ve put together four tips to help you get started:
#1 Awaken your Wardrobe
Here we go… let’s begin with cleaning out your wardrobe. Some find this challenging, but once the fear of letting go is overcome, it’s an incredibly freeing experience. The best way is to take all your clothes, bags, shoes and jewellery out of your wardrobe, and pile them on the floor or bed (you might want to do this in sections, eg clothes first, then bags/shoes etc). Pick up each item and place it into one of three piles – ‘Keep’, ‘Recycle/Sell’, or ‘Throw Away’. As you go through each item, ask yourself if you’ve worn it in the past 6 months and/or if it makes you feel good. Chances are if you’re hanging onto that size 8 number from pre-kids, and you’re still insisting on squeezing back into it at some stage in the future, it could be causing you undue inner stress. The key here is to be totally honest with yourself.
Oh, and while you’ve got everything out of your wardrobe, make sure you give it a wipe over inside and out, before you place your ‘keepers’ back in. Add some Rosemary or Lavender essential oil sachets and you’ve got yourself a clean, sweet smelling, critter-ridding wardrobe for a whole ‘nother year.
If you’re selling your home, you will feel so much better knowing that your wardrobe is neat and tidy when people come to inspect your home, as there’s always someone who will want to peek inside.
#2 Lighten your Linen Closet
So now you’ve cleaned out your wardrobe, you’re ready to tackle the next challenge. Let’s do the same thing with the linen closet. Once again, take everything out to give you an idea of what you’re dealing with and the opportunity to give the cupboard a good wipe out.
Sort out your towels, sheets and anything else you’ve got there into the same three piles – ‘Keep’, ‘Recycle/Sell’, or ‘Throw Away’. Some old towels might be worth cutting up, bagging and putting in your garage as they can be useful for hubby’s mechanical or gardening ventures.
Wash and air any towels and linen that haven’t been used for a while, then organise them all neatly back into your closet. Roll your towels – this saves a huge amount of space and looks great. To keep sheet and/or quilt cover sets together, try rolling or folding them up into the matching pillowcases so they never lose each other again. If you’re constantly bamboozled when trying to fold a fitted sheet neatly, check out this YouTube clip, and congratulations if you can actually achieve this first time!
Anyone who might want to take a peek inside your linen closet during a home inspection will be impressed.
#3 Create a Clever Kitchen
The kitchen is the main ‘heart’ hub of your home, and therefore must be on your spring clean to-do-list. Seeing baked-on grease, fingerprints, crumbs and food drips can make it feel like an insurmountable task – don’t worry, we feel you. Pull on some gloves and start by scrubbing all surfaces beginning at the top. As you work down, clean your oven hood, backsplashes, stovetop, benches and cupboard doors, finishing with the floors. Tackling your oven could be easy, or in most cases, it could take an extra couple of hours. If you’re time poor or you just don’t want to go there, call on a professional oven cleaner who can do it in no time with little fuss.
Empty out each cupboard or drawer at a time, clean, sort, and re-organise. Howards Storage World has some nifty ideas, clever containers and accessories to help you transform your kitchen cupboards, which will no doubt invoke ‘kitchen cupboard envy’ in your friends, not to mention any potential buyer inspecting your kitchen.
#4 Top to Toe, Room by Room
For a thorough spring clean, you will want to do a floor to ceiling clean in all rooms. It’s probably best to do one room at a time so as not to disrupt the whole household at once. Start in the first room of your choice by removing curtains and blinds, wiping/washing ceilings, fans, walls, window sills, doors, architraves, windows (inside and out, plus screens), light fixtures and cupboards. Check the instructions on your curtains – you may need to send them off to a cleaning specialist. Then, vacuum and wash your floors. If you have carpet, you may wish to call in a carpet cleaning specialist or if you’re really keen, you can hire a carpet cleaner machine from your local supermarket. Ask someone strong to help you move any heavy furniture so you can reach every inch of wall and floor. And, the safest way to reach ceilings and fans is no, not grandma’s chair, but a solid stepladder with perhaps someone trustworthy standing below ready to catch you if you lose your balance.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed and in need of some inspiration to motivate you, check out Marie Kondo, the ‘tidy’ expert and author of easy-to-read books such as ‘The life-changing magic of tidying up’. She has a whole gamut of practical ideas, rules of tidying, and a great 8-week tidy challenge you can follow on her website.
Remember, just by starting, you’re a winner!
Tackling the spring cleaning in your home is a job that can provide much personal satisfaction, but often requires patience and persistence. Good luck!