Cleaning & Decluttering: Imogen’s Top Organisational Tips this Spring
Where to Start?
At this time of year, with the weather throwing absolutely anything at us, I feel like we can often feel a bit turbulent. Not sure quite whether to put away the puffer coat for the summer, and definitely taking both an umbrella AND sunglasses to the shops with you, can leave us all a bit uncertain of what to do with ourselves. However Spring is my favourite season, and with it brings a fresh start and a chance to open up your life to improved ways of living. These are our top tips for Spring Cleaning your home and ultimately making it function better for you!
1. Get Yourself Some Storage!
My absolute favourite starting point for reaching that organised, everything-has-it’s-place, kind of life, is STORAGE. Everyone bangs on about it, but it really does solve (most of) the issues! A pile of papers in the kitchen that feels irrelevant but you really should hang onto? Get them in a folder, and sit it next to your cookbooks. Kids toys that seem to constantly be invading your living room? Put them in a basket and keep it next to the sofa. Bathtub always full of bottles and tubs? A shower caddy would probably sort that out. Having set places to store these daily little piles of mess helps to keep your home much clearer and you won’t feel like you’re constantly having to do a ‘big tidy’, as things are less likely to build up.
2. The Famous Ten-Minute-Tidy
If you’re anything like me, and enjoy wiling hours of your life away on Cleaning Tiktok, (warning: it’s addictive) these perfectly tidy homes with gleaming bathrooms often feel desperately out of reach. But if I’ve learnt anything from the super-mums, it’s that the ten minute a day clean is really all you need. Best achieved, in my opinion, as soon as you come through the door and definitely before you sit down. Choose one room, set your timer, and see how much you can get done before the clock runs out. Tidying, hoovering, dusting, every little bit helps. It’s actually become a challenge I find quite enjoyable.
3. Tackling Those Hidden Horrors
Once you feel like the daily tasks are under control, it’s time to tackle the bigger stuff. Everyone has a junk drawer in the kitchen that holds old phone chargers and all the spare bits of lateral flow tests, just like everyone has a cupboard full of bike pumps and deflated pool toys. These are the tasks that it’s very appealing to put off for as long as physically possible, but once attacked, really go the distance towards feeling like you’ve got things under control. My advice for these areas is to tackle one thing at a time. If you’ve done the kitchen junk drawer today, then please don’t start with the bike pump cupboard until at least next weekend. Chances are you’ll take everything out, lose motivation, throw it all back in again and won’t even attempt it until next year. Assess the mess in advance, what sort of items are in there and how would the space be better used? Do you need drawer dividers, boxes, or hooks on the wall?
4. Be More Ruthless!
Something good to consider, is being ruthless when sorting out our junk! Marie Kondo, the queen of decluttering, feels that if an item does not “spark joy” then we do not need to hold onto it. I’m not sure if I would go quite as far as that, but I do believe that sometimes when clearing out a room you can get stuck in the sentimentality of items. It’s nice to have a box of sentimental bits and bobs, but those very faded notebooks from Year 9 that actually only have random scribbles of French in them- would you miss them if you never saw them again? Would you even think twice about it?
And finally, don’t feel disheartened if your resolutions to be more organised feel like they’ve fallen at the first hurdle, there’s never a better time than right now to create the change you want to see and form long lasting habits.
Good luck!
