Category: productivity

This year, I’m trying really hard to be methodical with my spring cleaning to make sure everything gets done over the next three months. So, today, I’m going to share a number of strategies I’ve adopted which are working really well so far. Obviously, it’s only the second week of March at the moment, but I’m super pleased with the progress that I’ve made so far and the number of items that have been crossed off my various lists.

Getting started

Before Christmas, when I was struggling with motivation to do things, I downloaded an app called Finch onto my phone. This self-care app combines gamification with mental wellness tools, letting you care for a virtual pet called a Birb whilst improving your own habits and mental health. I’ve stuck with using it for over 100 days now and I’ve increased the number of goals I work towards each day, especially now I’m feeling well. At the end of February, app users were encouraged to sign up to a spring cleaning challenge, where you have 14 tasks to complete before the end of March. So far, I’ve done a task each day and the sense of accomplishment I’ve felt as I’ve completed each one has really increased my motivation. And it’s even left me with the urge to do a few more cleaning activities at other points during the day. Of course, you don’t have to sign up to an app to do some spring cleaning, but what you might like to do, is pick out some ‘easy wins’ that will only take 5 or 10 minutes to complete and hopefully, this will encourage you to do more.

Some examples of 5 minute decluttering and cleaning tasks include:

• clean light switches and door handles
• polish a mirror
• dust the corners of the main rooms in your house
• bin out of date cosmetics / toiletries
• remove stains from cups and mugs
• vacuum under the sofa cushions
• dust pendant lights or lamps
• tackle soap scum on your shower screen
• check the fridge for items that are ‘past their best’ or out of date

Adopting The 5 Minute Clean Routine

This is the name of a book written by popular Instagrammer Anna Louisa who offers cleaning tips and advice. I purchased this handy cleaning bible a number of months ago but only dedicated time to reading it when I was feeling better and more motivated to get my house clean and tidy. In it, as well as providing lots of cleaning tips, she shares her ‘5 Minute Clean Routine’ with the basic premise that most household tasks can be achieved in minutes (unless your home needs a serious declutter first), or at least broken down into five minute chunks of time. The idea being that tiny tasks lead to small and satisfying wins which make ‘…you feel like you’re in the driving seat of your own life, rather than a backseat passenger.’ It helps readers to see that cleaning routines, checklists, five minute bursts of activity plus a carefully curated cleaning kit can make such a difference to your home and your happiness in it.

Towards the back of the book, there’s a long spring cleaning list of tasks which you might do once or twice a year. Again, these can be split up into 5 minute blocks or longer if you’re feeling particularly motivated. However, this year, I chose to create my own lists for the different rooms of my home and also a more general list of chores around the home. Of course, as Anna Louisa says in her book, you don’t have to get everything done over the springtime. You might tick things off over the course of six weeks, 3 months or longer, depending on what works best for you.

Creating my cleaning lists

Rather than writing my room by room lists on scraps of paper or on a list pad, I chose to create something I could tweak and come back to again and again. I wanted to create digital documents but also print them off to stick in my bullet journal. As I currently have a Canva Pro subscription, I had a look on there to see if there was anything I could adapt. Although I generally use photographs and images, there’s also another feature of Canva where you can search thousands of templates for all manner of documents. In the search box, I typed ‘Spring cleaning list’ and was excited by the many examples available which would save me lots of time and energy. I opted for a pretty floral design and got to work setting up files for each of the main rooms in our home.

To ensure I had listed everything for the rooms I wanted to work on, I physically went to each room in turn (over a number of days) and looked around and noted down all of the different items and places I wanted to focus on (on paper to be transferred to my digital lists). This was much better than doing it by memory as it’s easy to forget small areas that often get overlooked. I also tried to think of some tasks that I do every week anyway (such as cleaning the toilet and vacuuming floors) along with tasks which aren’t done so regularly (such as cleaning the extractor fan in the bathroom and vacuuming under and behind the sofa).

Designing your own cleaning schedule

What you do and when you do it can be very much personalised to you and your circumstances. Perhaps you have a really busy work schedule and find yourself exhausted in the evenings and want to do the bulk of your cleaning on a weekend. Or maybe you have a small child you care for and want to get a few chores done during nap time. Whatever your circumstances and life commitments, you need to work around your existing routines and carve out regular tidying and cleaning time, either in quick 5 or 10 minute bursts or a longer time period when you feel up to it. Even an hour of housework can be broken down into five minute chunks to help prevent overwhelm. Just like scheduling an appointment in your planner or on your calendar, try to use time-blocking to map out your spring cleaning sessions to ensure you stick to your commitments.

Also to be considered, is your attitude to cleaning and any short or long term physical or mental health difficulties you’re currently facing. Perhaps you really struggle with motivation to clean right now but you want to make your home environment a priority and know some spring cleaning would make you feel much better. If that’s the case, you want to start slowly with a few quick win tasks (maybe from some of the above suggestions) that hopefully spur you on to do a little bit more. Maybe you become exhausted quite quickly due to the physical nature of cleaning or are easily distracted so find that a little and often approach works best for you. However you organise your cleaning time, remember to do it with plenty of self-kindness and compassion, celebrating each of your small wins or recognising and accepting that you don’t have enough spoons that day and it’s okay to rest and plan some cleaning time for another day – you have the whole of spring (and beyond if you so wish) after all.

Final words…

I hope you’ve found today’s blog post useful and it’s either given you the motivation to get started on your spring cleaning or some ideas about how to proceed. My lists are pretty thorough but I’ve still thought of a few things I missed which I intend to add to the space at the bottom. For me, the tasks are very much pick and choose, rather than the lists being a room by room work through from top to bottom over the course of a day as I prefer a little and often approach. I’ll be delegating some of the tasks to my husband or asking for assistance as I’ve already attempted to move the sofa and found it stuck to the carpet (ha ha!) and will definitely need help with moving the other heavier items of furniture. There are also some household tasks that I would be getting in a professional for, such as deep cleaning carpets (although ours don’t require this), cleaning the upstairs exterior windows or the outside of a conservatory (if we had one) as I feel there are some jobs that make sense to pay someone else to do.

Thanks for reading and happy spring cleaning!