Jumpstart Your Spring Cleaning

In case you missed the news in all of the Superbowl excitement, Punxsutawney Phil predicted that Spring is coming early this year! Time to get a jumpstart on some spring cleaning. Here are some tips for cleaning up the 5 most important rooms in your house!

Kitchen:

Fridge

The fridge is often one of the most overlooked places when it comes to cleaning and organizing. The best time to clean out your fridge is when its mostly empty, so try picking a day right before you go to stock up at the grocery store. Empty out your fridge, dumping anything past its expiration date or practically empty. Wipe down the shelves and drawers, and start reorganizing your foodstuffs. This tutorial by Clean Mama has a great game plan for tackling cleaning and organizing your fridge.

Pantry and Cabinets

With spring approaching now is a great time to start cleaning out your pantry and cabinets. Like your fridge, start by getting rid of anything past its expiration date or mostly empty. It’s also a good idea to go through your Tupperware and tableware, pulling out anything with a lot of wear and tear, chipped, or damaged. Easy Organized Home has a great post with ideas for organizing your Tupperware.

Bedroom:

Closet

Clean out your closet, sorting out anything that you haven’t worn in the past year, have outgrown, or needs some repairs. Any item you don’t want or need anymore that is still in good condition can be donated to your local goodwill, thrift shop, or clothing donation center. If you’re looking at your closet and having trouble figuring out where to start, this is a great post about How to Finally Clean out Your Closet for Good.

Under your bed

The underside of your bed is often one of the most neglected areas in your house but it is a great place to store and organize your less used or seasonal items. Clear out everything from underneath your bed, getting rid of any junk you no longer need and consider investing in some under-bed storage containers. You can keep extra bedding, towels, decorations, gift wrapping supplies, seasonal clothing under your bed, or more depending on your storage needs!

Office:

Drawers/Filing cabinet

Papers can collect and pile up, creating chaos in your office, if you’re not careful. While some of these papers may be important, many are often filed away and forgotten. Take the time to sort through your office and files, correctly filing away the important documents, destroying anything that’s outdated or unnecessary especially if it has identifying information on it. Life Hacker has a great article about decluttering your office that you can read here.

Computer

When you’re cleaning out your office, don’t forget about your desktop! Even if you have a file structure that works for you, it is still easy for your files and home screens to get cluttered with unnecessary documents and files. Here’s Picture Keeper’s Guide to File Structures if you’re unsure how to get started. Take some time to go through and reorganize as you need, and move anything you no longer need into your trash. Now is also a great time to perform a computer backup if you haven’t recently, and always make sure to keep an extra backup somewhere safe! I recommend the 3-2-1 backup rule:

• Keep 3 copies of your files. One original and two backups.
• The 2 backups can be stored on your Picture Keeper and in the Cloud.
• And make sure at least 1 backup is kept somewhere safe, like a safe or with a trusted family member.

Bathroom

Deep clean

As Spring approaches, pick a rainy day and commit to deep cleaning your bathroom, future you will thank you for it. Take the time to get to all of those harder to reach places and pay some special attention to the bits that don’t get cleaned up as often. Your showerhead, light fixtures, mirrors, and tiles will all appreciate some sprucing up. Here are some great tips for deep cleaning these and other spots in your bathroom

Medicine cabinet

If you’ve been holding onto old or expired medicine in your medicine cabinet, it’s a good idea to give it all a deep cleaning. After the expiration date, medication becomes less effective and can even have adverse effects. The FDA recommends disposing of leftover medicine as soon as possible. Check out their article about how to dispose of expired and unused medication.

Storage

Sort family photos/home movies/scrapbook

If you like to keep old photos, scrapbooks, and home movies now might be a good time to sort through them. These items can start to deteriorate or get damaged in storage and may get forgotten when they’re not being looked at regularly. Scanning old photos is a great way to make sure all of your old photos are protected digitally, so no matter what happens, you’ll always have them in a safe place. Here’s our blog post on how to get those photos scanned to your computer. If you’re like me, many home videos are stuck on VHS tapes that I can no longer watch, but all hope is not lost. Here’s some information for converting your old VHS home movies and film to DVD and digital versions either with the help of some experts or at home.

Donate

Storage can also get cluttered with items and toys that you’ve stored away for later, but completely forgot or outgrew. Gather up anything that is still in decent condition, like toys your children have outgrown, old decorations that you’ve forgotten about, and anything else you just don’t need anymore and take it to your preferred donation center. You can also trash anything that’s started to fall apart and break at this time.

Spring cleaning your entire home can be a daunting task, but by tackling the big parts early, you can cut down on how much work you have to do later this spring, leaving even more time to enjoy springtime with your friends and family.