The Best How-To Guide for Productive Spring Cleaning

Let me help you do your spring cleaning the right way. Because spring cleaning is my jam. I’m serious! I’m the queen of throwing things out and the princess of organizing what I have left. I’d be a minimalist if my kids and husband would let me.

Contrary to popular belief, spring cleaning is not about purging your home of stuff you don’t need. It’s also not about cleaning all the nooks and crannies you never make it to. It’s about both.

Sound like a daunting task? Of course, it does. That’s because we have way more crap than any household needs to function and, in reality, all that junk is causing dysfunction in our homes and families instead of peace. When we pare down on the stuff, not only are we reducing tension for ourselves, our husbands, and our kids but we’re also giving ourselves room to clean. Keeping junk out of the house automatically means the possibility of a consistently more tidy home. Doesn’t that sound nice?

Warning: going through all your stuff to declutter will make a huge mess. If you know that in the beginning maybe it won’t make you quite as crazy. Be prepared for a true spring purge to take a couple days and plan your activities and meals accordingly. You don’t want to worry about having to cook a full meal with a kitchen table full of clothes and toys and whatever else you want to get rid of. I’m just saying. Prepare yo-self.

Let me also point you to this post specifically about how to declutter. Believe it or not there can be a lot of feelings during the process and this post takes you through some of those.

Purge first

You don’t want to really clean your house before this purge because dust is going to go everywhere. You’ll be pulling things out of corners you had forgotten about years ago and making giant piles all over the house. So don’t stress yourself out thinking that it needs to be clean before you purge.

The truth is that it will never be as clean as you want it until the purge. You need the empty space for the things you want to keep. And if you put all your things away, you’ll just be dragging them back out anyway. At least, you will if you do it the right way.

Go through one room at a time.

I usually start in the kitchen because that’s the room most essential to my family. We can go a day or two with takeout while I’m cleaning the kitchen, but then it needs to be put back together. Next, I’ll move into the second most essential room for the family, like the living room, dining room, or playroom when we had one. Once these are finished I tackle the bathroom because it’s usually a pretty quick job. Then I start on the most daunting task: the bedrooms. Yikes!

Spring cleaning the kitchen

Take everything out of the drawers and cabinets. Look at all this stuff and figure out what needs to go. Do you need 12 spatulas and 23 sippy cups? Do you use that George Foreman grill in the bottom corner cabinet? Everything you don’t need should go into a box for donation. Next, take everything off the countertops. Again, anything you don’t need goes into the box.

Now clean everything. Inside the cabinets. Inside the drawers. Countertops, backsplash, light switches, windowsills. Cabinet doors. Clean everything before anything goes back into the kitchen. When you get ready to put everything back you should have much more room to work with. You may want to move stuff around so the things you use most are easily accessible to you. Most importantly, everything should have a home.

Spring cleaning the living room

For most people, the living room ends up being a catch-all for things that belong somewhere else. It’s like purgatory for all our stuff.

First, take everything that doesn’t belong there and put it in the room where it actually goes. I don’t care if you put it away or not (unless it’s for the kitchen), just get it in the correct room. If it’s something you don’t even want to put it straight into that donation box.

Now take everything else out of the living room except the furniture. (If you can’t take it out, move it all to one side for cleaning then repeat for the other side.) Scoot the furniture out from the wall to sweep behind and wipe the baseboards. I wipe my baseboards with a dryer sheet. It’s phenomenal at removing dust and is supposed to help inhibit future dust growth. Sweep, mop, clean the baseboards, window sills, and light switches.

And for the love of everything, clean that ceiling fan before the sweeping. A good way to clean ceiling fans is by placing an old pillowcase over each blade and removing the dust as you remove the pillowcase. It helps keep dust from going airborne and you can remove any remaining dust with some dusting spray on a cloth.

Once the living room is clean, move the furniture back. (This would be a great time to try different configurations if you’re bored with the current layout of the room.) Once the furniture is in, add your decorative elements back into the room. Don’t add too many. Remember, it needs to be easy to keep this room clean. Less clutter is less to clean and clean around!

Add anything else that absolutely goes in this room. For me, that would be books on a bookshelf and a basket for blankets that make cuddling on the couch easy. If you have kids, you may want to add an empty basket that would make toy pick-up (and return to the bedroom) easy. Choose what goes into this room by knowing what’s important to your family.

Spring cleaning the bathroom

Spring cleaning the bathroom is fairly easy. Because bathrooms are some of the smallest rooms in the house, there isn’t a lot of floor space to worry about and there usually isn’t much (if any) movable furniture to clean around.

Start off like you did in the kitchen, by emptying all the cabinets and drawers. Check dates on everything that has one and throw out the ones that have expired. This not only includes medications but also things like lotions and sunscreens. Take it from a person who got sun poisoning just last year. Check. Your. Sunscreen.

And this is going to hurt, but makeup needs to be thrown away after a certain amount of time. Don’t gamble with a chance of infection. Just throw it away. After you’ve gotten rid of everything that has expired (and anything you don’t want), you’ve already won half the battle.

Now clean everything. Just like you did in the kitchen. Clean out cabinets and drawers, countertops, light fixtures and switches, baseboards, and floors. Now is a nice time to clean some of the things you don’t think about often, like your faucets and showerheads. Also, make sure to clean the shower walls and check the caulking around the tub and shower. This often gets overlooked until it’s too late so looking at it this one time of year could help you reduce the chance of something bad happening later on.

Now that everything is clean, put everything back into the bathroom. Think about the things you use most often and organize them accordingly. Use bins or plastic containers with lids to keep like items together. When everything has a home it’s much easier to keep track of it. It will also motivate you to actually put things away.

Spring cleaning bedroom closets

You can start preparing to spring clean your closets months in advance with one simple task. Turn all the hangers in your closet backward. As you wear clothes and place them back into the closet, turn the hanger forward. At the end of a few months (and just in time for spring cleaning), you’ll know what you don’t wear. This should help you pare down your everyday wear to what you actually wear.

Formals and special event pieces will not be determined by this. But if you haven’t worn it in a couple years, you probably won’t. If it hasn’t fit in a while, get rid of it. If you can’t bear to toss it, at least put it in a tote and get it out of your closet!

When you’re talking about kids’ clothes, only keep things that younger kids will grow into in the next year or so. Only keep things that are super nice: nothing with stains or holes. If kids’ clothes don’t fit into these categories get rid of them. I don’t care how. Just get them out.

If you don’t already have a shoe storage system, find one. I really like the plastic shoe bins because they keep your shoes protected from dust and other pests. Storing your shoes (and purses and other accessories) correctly will free up so much room in your closet.

If you store other things in your closet, as most of us do, use a smart storage system that works for your space and make sure you put like things together so everything is easy to find. There’s nothing worse than dragging out half of the closet to find some AA batteries.

Spring cleaning the bedroom

Now that the closets are done, I bet your bedroom is a mess. Start off by getting rid of any unused furniture. Free up the space you already have instead of trying to make more. If there are things in your room that don’t belong there, take them to their home. If it doesn’t have a home, and if you can’t seem to make a home for it, you should question if you really need it.

Once you’ve finished this task, take everything out of your bedroom except the bed and dressers. As you do this, I guarantee you’ll find more things you don’t need. Toss them. Then go through the same process you’ve been through in every other room. Clean the ceiling fans, window sills, surfaces, light switches, etc. Then move to the floor where you can sweep or vacuum or whatever your room requires.

When you move things back in, use the same logic you did in the living room. Everything that goes in is something you either have to clean or clean around or both. Make your job easier, and your room roomier, by putting in only what you really love. This room should be your sanctuary from everything else going on in the house. Make it a priority.

Spring cleaning kids’ bedrooms

Spring cleaning kids’ bedrooms will follow the exact formula as above, except with toys. Get rid of any that are broken or missing pieces first. Then say goodbye to whatever your child hasn’t played within a while. If your kids are little you may not want to let them see you do this. They have a tendency to suddenly love every toy you put into the donation bin. If your kids are bigger, they’ll probably end up getting rid of more than you would have, so you may want to enlist their help. Everything else should be just like before.

Spring cleaning other closets

Whether you do this at the beginning or the end, don’t let closets stress you out. These tiny rooms are meant to hold the things you need just of out sight. So ask yourself: Do I need it? How often? Do I need it in the house or could it be stored somewhere else? Armed with answers to these questions you should be able to organize things in a way that makes sense to you.

Why is this important anyway?

Only you can make the decisions that are right for your family. Everything in your home will set the tone for mood, attitude, and behavior. Many professionals and studies have linked the amount of clutter we have to the amount of anxiety we experience. Destress your home by decluttering it. Fill it with things that are meaningful and practical for your family. Then you can sit back and feel good about your accomplishment.

And for the love…. don’t go shopping after you’ve finished.

1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:  6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away,

Ecclesiastes 3:1, 6