Spring Cleaning: Mindsets and Quick Starts

Do you hopefully anticipate the arrival of spring each year, especially the chance to reset and renew your home with some spring cleaning? 

Yeah, me neither.

Each spring, I’m enthralled by the new life that appears on branch tips and sprouting out of ground that not long ago was frozen. Also, each spring I am overwhelmed by the idea of spring cleaning and all the organizational projects I could be doing but probably won’t actually get to. 

I’m a planner, and I love to have a strategy laid out for completing a job as efficiently and effectively as possible. To do lists? Love them. When to start checklists? Give me more.  You know who doesn’t live life that way? Little children. Cleaning with my 21 month old and 4 year old in the house is most often an exercise in futility. As the abandoned pages and plans in my bullet journal demonstrate, I haven’t yet figured out successful new rhythms of spring cleaning with my kids.

My new approach: embrace the bursts. 

If you’re anything like me, my energy and attention for cleaning and organizing comes in bursts. This past weekend we visited college friends in Kansas City, and I was inspired by some of the simple organization tips and tricks that my friend has implemented in her pantry.

When we arrived home Sunday afternoon, after unpacking the van, I set to work. Was it the most immediate need? Nope! But I embraced the burst of energy and inspiration I had. Costco had some nice transparent pantry organizers that I decided to go for. Since my instacart order arrived before we did, they were ready to go! These clear bins helped me wrangle the various granola bars and snack packs of honey grahams that had been floating around the pantry, as well as get rid of the cumbersome boxes they had all been haphazardly housed in.

I also used the two of the clear containers with kids we already own to dump in our half-eaten boxes of animal crackers and cheese crackers.

The result? I can see what we have! 

My pantry is looking much better, and I feel more confident that I will buy less and we as a family will waste less. I’m always looking to accomplish that with our food purchases, and with rising grocery prices this has become even more of a priority for me. Actually being able to see what we have in the pantry makes it easier for me to accurately plan my grocery list for the week!

About a month ago, my husband and I both got a burst to purge our closets of the clothes we are no longer wearing. I think we were experiencing one of Missouri’s several false springs, and therefore decided it was time to cull our clothes. While our children made huge messes in other parts of the house, we piled the too small, the not-probably-ever-going-to-be-worn-again, and the ones we never liked but kept anyways onto our bed. Marie Kondo would have been beaming. 

We also turned our hangers around so that we have a check on the clothes we kept. As we wear them, we will turn the hangers back to normal. Anything that hasn’t been worn in 6 months - a year goes too!

At the time, it wasn’t the most immediate need, but we embraced the burst and went for it anyway. We ended up with a load of clothes to donate to our local not-for-profit thrift store and face fewer and better fitting options as we try to choose our clothes each day. 

If your kids are anything like mine, they long to be involved in whatever you’re doing. I’m working to use this more to my advantage. My 21 month old is a pro at throwing things in baskets, so she helps me sort laundry on a regular basis. This also works for sorting out toys to get rid of. I decide; she throws it in the appropriate bin. My four year old can help fold laundry and can also tell me which clothes he no longer likes. If you’ve got any tips on how to get him to do the same for toys, let me know. 

Put those kids to work washing the floor too. My little girl thinks a washcloth is the best toy in the world! After meals, I rinse out the cloth I used to wipe her face and hands and let her go to town on the floor under her chair. Her brother, not wanting to be left out, is usually primed at that point to also help with a small cleaning task. It’s still hypothetical at this point, but I think I could really get her into cleaning the floorboards too if I tried. 

I’ve learned motherhood is a lot about flexibility and creativity. I often have to let go of my ideas about the perfectly efficient plan and instead embrace the productive mess that is life with littles. Having other moms to ask for tips and tricks and to sound out your new ideas is a huge help. Knowing that you’re not alone as you figure out how to make life a little more organized and a little less chaos is a gift. And good friends will help you remember that if all you accomplish today is making one corner of order while giggles and messes run wild in other parts of the house, that is enough.