Let the Sunshine in

Welcoming the sunshine into your home can highlight all sorts of murky corners and piles of stuff littered about. So it’s opening windows and cleaning time!

The generally accepted tradition is to do a massive clean in the Spring hence the term ‘Spring Cleaning’ but it really doesn’t matter when you give your home the once over. If it’s not too cold during the winter months, why not blow a little fresh air through the house and have a tidy up as well.

Just after Christmas, when the festive debris is looking stale, watch the weather and try and find a reasonable day – not too cold and preferably not pouring with rain! – when you can give your home a breath of fresh air.

The easiest way to ‘spring clean’ is to de-clutter first. The word ‘clutter’ comes from, I believe, a Latin word meaning to coagulate. There is no way you want to be coagulating up your world. Sometimes it seems impossible to keep a house tidy, especially if there are little peeps sharing the same space!

The way to do it is to get organized. Take it one step at a time. When we get overwhelmed with anything, we tend to fall into a place of stress – anxiety, panic, sheer lack of motivation. And the job won’t get done. Clutter can be a very dis-empowering state and, after all, our environment does make a difference.

So, start from the top. If you have an attic packed full of ‘stuff’ and you don’t use the space for living, ignore it for now. Get the rest of the house in order, then you can start bringing things down and sorting them slowly. If the clutter in the attic isn’t actually in your way or in your face, it can be postponed.

Things to have before you start:

**rubbish bags
**boxes/containers
**perhaps a cleaning cloth or two.

And most importantly

**A desire for tidiness!

TIP: Don’t try and tackle it all at once. Be realistic. If the house hasn’t been tidied for more than a couple of months, take it slowly. Decide on one room at a time. Then choose one particular category in each room; clothes, toys, etc;

Once you get in the swing of tidying you are rewarded with more creativity, productivity and a boatload of feel-good. Once the house is tidy, cleaning is a piece of cake! Even if it’s not Springtime just yet 🙂