Hibernation is over

It’s that time of the year.

The birds are back in the garden.

The weeds are waist high.

The four walls are starting to cave in.

The laundry cupboard erupts with towels and face washers and odd socks every time you open it.

The kids’ rooms are bursting with bits of paper disguised as colouring in and forgotten library books and “special’ drawings.

The fridge is emitting a weird and concerning odour.

And the bathroom… let’s not even go there.

Hibernation is coming to an end and you’re hungry…

Hungry for sunshine and warmth and cocktails and fresh starts.

And you just want to go outside and enjoy it. You’re ready. You deserve it.

But there’s a nagging, annoying, persistent little voice inside that reminds you that you promised yourself you would start the summer season with a good spring clean of your space.

Now you’re here however, that’s actually the LAST thing you want to do!

So, rather than beat yourself into submission and start the never-ending task of deep cleaning your home, let’s just focus on the basics, with a few little extras that will make you feel oh so smug and organised without actually taking you very long, or a lot of energy, to do so.

It’s not mess.

It’s called “lived in”.

The basics

Spring cleaning does not have to be difficult or super time consuming. You don’t even really need to carve time out of your already busy life to do it. It’s about being smart about what you’re choosing to do… and not feeling guilty about what you choose NOT to do!!

After all spring cleaning is really just a “tidy up”… on steroids.

To start, you might want to write a list, break it down into rooms and then start room by room.

You could break what you want to do into tasks, rather than rooms, and tackle it that way.

You might be the type of person who does zero planning and waits for the cleaning mood to take over you…

Whatever way you do it, as long as it works for you, who cares?!

Some things to consider when starting your spring clean:

• Can I achieve what I want to in one cleaning session?

• Do I really need to everything on my list?

• What’s the longest task on my list?

• What’s the task I least want to do?

• Why do I actually want to clean/tidy the bedroom/bathroom/kitchen etc?

We are all super busy, so it is really important that we don’t make too much extra work for ourselves. It just snowballs and can make us feel more anxious and like we are not achieving anything!

Why not start with editing your stack of books next to your bed - makes you feel far less anxious about all that reading you're "supposed" to be doing and you won't be fearful that your stack will collapse on you during the night!

Checklists

So, to help us all feel a little less overwhelmed, I’ve created a checklist with some ideas of spaces in your home that you can spruce up with very little effort and time, but boy will they make you feel like you have your life together!

I’ve also created a little REEL over on our Instagram page that teases some of these ideas out a little.

I’d love to know if you use the checklist, or even pinch one of these ideas for your own spring cleaning checklist. Let me know in the comments below :)