Spring cleaning may not be as crucial today as it was in the days of gas lamps and woodburning stoves, but we owe it to ourselves and our families to air out the house, get as much dirt and dust out of our house as much as possible and create an environment that is healthy and also visually pleasing.
(Notice I didn't say perfect!)
If you think you just don't have the time, please do your best to make the time. Mother's Day is coming. Instead of buying you expensive and unnecessary gifts (clutter), why not encourage your family to please give you the time and energy needed to get some cleaning/decluttering/painting/remodeling done? Make it a family weekend project. It could even be a yearly event. Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather have that then another unneeded item (even the handmade ones that I guilt myself into keeping).
If you are really that busy, then you need to be the one to set aside the time because quite frankly, no one else is going to do it.
Unless you really love cleaning and you are the type of person that absolutely has to do things a certain way (in other words, if you are a control freak... sorry!), I strongly suggest that you get your family on board with this task. Many hands really do make light work! If you think it isn't worth the effort to get them on board, I assure you that it is. There are safe and helpful jobs for kids of all ages.
Here's my most recent breakthrough:
Over Easter break, I was helping my 10 year old son clean his room. It was quite dusty in his room, and since I was moving furniture around to get to all the dust- he has allergies and asthma, so it really needs to be done fairly regularly, but it hadn't been done in a while- I decided to rearrange his furniture. He decided he would spend that time going through his desk. He really hates to part with things so I assumed he would take everything out, then neatly put all of the same things back into the desk (he is a bit of a hoarder, but a rather neat & organized one, so I tolerate it to a certain degree).
Before I knew it, all on his own, he had a stack of about a dozen Nintendo DS game cases stacked up for me to recycle. I literally gasped when I saw them and he responded with: "Well, I really don't need them anymore, so I'm getting rid of them". And so into the recycing they went. (Hooray!!) And let me tell you, this was a HUGE breakthrough for him.
This is what living by example does. Not nagging, not threatening, but also not ignoring. Yes, I had asked him about these before, but I knew he had to be ready to let go of them, just as he has seen me get rid of things I decided I no longer wanted on countless occasions.
And I believe that everytime he lets go of something he doesn't want or need, it makes it that much easier to let go of things in the future because he has those types of positive experiences to draw from.
After getting rid of the DS cases, he put the rest of his things in his desk and now he is much more able to manage those things.
This story illustrates how strongly I suggest that you declutter as you clean, especially when you Spring Clean (because I'm sure you'll find along the way that it's clutter more than anything else that slows down the cleaning process). And once you make the decision to let go of something, get it out of the house ASAP. (I know I say that all the time, but I need to hear it as much as everyone else does!)
Decluttering and cleaning go hand in hand not only because it makes it easier to clean that space today, but it also helps you maintain that space in the simplest way possible for the future.
I also strongly encourage you to put off doing any household repairs or remodeling projects until after you finish cleaning. I know that sounds counter-intuitive to some of you, especially the do-it-your-selfers, but fixing something isn't the same as decluttering an area and cleaning something.
Repairs, repainting, remodeling, etc. are all great things, but they create new messes and stresses and therefore distract us from the purpose of just getting the whole house clean and getting it done. (Guilty as charged!)
Keep a list of repairs as you clean, prioritize the repairs and then tackle them one room at a time. And then be sure to tidy up the messes you create when doing the repairs before moving on to the next room. Oh, and be sure to finish the repairing and remodeling in one room before moving onto another room, ok?
One project at at time.
One room at a time.
You may think you're getting more done by working on more than one project at a time, but I assure you that is usually not the case. Unless a project is unforseeably stalled for a lengthy period of time (such as the stove you ordered is backordered for a month), please do not move onto another room until the first room is finished.
Currently I have patches of peeled wallpaper on my kitchen walls that, so far, we have not been able to remove. These walls have looked like this for almost a year now. In fact, it will be a year this July. That's when we finished the rest of our housepainting while our kids were at church camp for the week and we discovered that we couldn't get the wallpaper off. This July, while both the kids are at church camp, we'll try again. But I can function with patches of peeled wallpaper on my walls (I'm not happy about it, but I can still cook meals and I can still clean the room).
What I'm talking about is tearing rooms apart, getting halfway finished, and either because of poor planning or boredom or a series of unfortunate events, the room stays in it's deconstructed state for far too long and then the unthinkable happens... people turn around and do the same thing to another room! Please, I beg you- don't do it!!
One project at a time. One room at a time. One mess at a time. One day at a time. Make these your mantra. And whoever is the most focused in the family, put that person in charge of managing the project.
My husband is, by far, the more focused of the two of us. I have my good qualities, but staying focused and staying on task are not among them. I blame it a little bit on the multi-tasking that often comes with motherhood. (And perhaps a touch of ADD... I can't even sit through a 30 minute TV show!) If the paint was taking too long to dry in one room, I would suggest we start tearing apart the next room we were going to paint so we could start painting in there while the paint was drying. We live in a fairly small house, so for us, that really wasn't very feasible- there is only so much room in one small house for destruction while you are trying to live in it, especially with children. Painting is hard work and there's nothing wrong with taking a water break or lunch break or do errands or go for a walk while the paint is drying. You see, I just wanted to work super hard and super fast to get it done. Well, we had all week to paint two bedrooms. It was better (for us, anyway) to take short breaks here and there instead of killing ourselves trying to get it done quickly, probably because it kept us from getting dehydrated, hungry, overtired and cranky.
Give yourself plenty of time to work on projects becuase they always ... ALWAYS... take longer than you think they will.
Yes, I have learned a lot about focusing on one task at a time from my darling husband. (And he, in turn, has learned that sometimes multi-tasking is best, although I am slowing learning that usually his way is better, but don't tell him I said that!)
I think that's why my husband & I make such a great team. So please- work together and play off of each other's strengths- it won't eliminate the stress of cleaning, painting, remodeling, etc., but it will certainly lessen it. You might even have, dare I say it, a good time?
So the bottom line is this: before you tackle any household task, whether you are cleaning out a drawer, patching a wall or remodeling a whole room, if it's been a while since that area has had a good cleaning and decluttering, please do that first. Even if it isn't spring.
Besides, it's usually much harder to clutter up a clean space than it is a dirty one, which makes it a natural time to declutter.
You will thank me!!
