The scope and scale of spring cleaning your entire home may mean that some “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” jobs simply don’t get done. Which may be fine for a while…until you face an avalanche in the storage closet or waste an hour sorting through messy desk drawers, looking for your missing checkbook.
So set the kitchen timer for 15 minutes and see just how much you can accomplish before you even start the big spring clean. And when the buzzer goes off, be sure to take pride in your progress.
Break down the big jobs
The saying goes, “How do you eat an elephant?” And the answer is, “A bite at a time.” If your elephant is a storage closet that is filled to bursting, your first impulse may be to quickly shut the door. Instead, break down a big job into easy, doable 15-minute tasks. Start by clearing off a single shelf. Then decide what you should keep and put it back on the shelf; what you don’t keep can be given or thrown away. Be ruthless: half-burned candles, games with missing pieces, single gloves—gone!
If you’ve got 30 minutes, put up some battery-operated puck-shaped lights in closets, deep cabinets and pantries so you can see exactly what’s in all the corners. Once you have clear knowledge that you already have two bottles of dishwashing liquid under the sink, you’re less likely to buy a third.
Tune in and clean out
Why not pull out a drawer and sort through it while watching the tube? Just put the kitchen, desk, bathroom or dresser drawer on a tray table and keep a trash can handy.
As you go through “catch-all” drawers, follow the advice of Peter Walsh (author of
It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff) and put everything in the drawer into a box or a
Ziploc® Brand Big Bag. Then, over the course of the next week, whenever you use anything from the bag, put it back in the drawer. At the end of the week, toss or give away anything left in the bag.
If you have 30 minutes, use the empty drawer as a template to trace and cut out new contact or lining paper for your other, matching drawers from the same unit. This tried-and-true idea will make it easier to wipe down the drawers and keep them clean.
Make it a family affair
Give each member of your family a garbage bag to fill with things that can be thrown away. Everything counts: from old magazines and catalogs to items in the pantry or the medicine cabinet, which are past their expiration dates. If you have a family of four, by the end of the week you may well have filled and thrown out 28 bags of garbage and clutter!
If you’ve got 30 minutes, have everyone fill a
Ziploc® Brand Big Bag with items that can be given away or donated to charity. Consider things like clothes that no longer fit, sports equipment, toys, books and games. When you get rid of things you no longer want, you also save time by eliminating the need to clean and dust them. It’s a win-win!
Become a groupie
Here’s another way of nibbling on that “elephant.” Spend 15 minutes walking around your home with an empty laundry basket and collect just one type of thing—maybe hats and gloves, kids’ or pets’ toys, craft projects or books. Once you’ve assembled your collection, decide immediately how to best store it or put it away.
If you’ve got 30 minutes, teach your family the O-H-I-O method for keeping tidy:
Only
Handle
It
Once. When the mail comes in, sort it immediately. Same with school papers—file or toss them. Whether it’s dirty dishes, laundry or bill paying, the O-H-I-O method works again and again.
Multitask your daily to-dos
While you’re sorting laundry, look for items that are stained, torn or worn beyond repair and toss them. The same goes for doing dishes: are you filling your dishwasher with chipped or cracked glasses and plates? If they can’t be repaired, get rid of them or replace them.
Right@Home™ member Debbie D. multitasks by keeping her cleaning supplies in the bathroom. She’ll spray down the bathtub and sink with
Scrubbing Bubbles® Foaming Bathroom Cleaners* and then go do something else. Says Debbie, "When you return, the bubbles will have done their work and all you have to do is a quick wipe-down."
Add it all up
Even the busiest household can manage 15 minutes a day for some pre-spring cleaning and decluttering—and the results could astound you. As you watch your progress, you’ll be even more motivated to keep it up. Just be sure to make time—at least 30 minutes—to reward yourself for taking care of some important cleaning tasks before the start of spring.
* Antibacterial Scrubbing Bubbles® XXI Bathroom Cleaner