We are talking about the all-encompassing, microscopic checklist that extensively lists every single filthy thing in your house that you haven’t thought about since — ever.

From a biological perspective, the urge to clean during spring is as natural as bears waking up from hibernation to look for food. There’s more daylight and energy resulting in “a kind of unconscious collective movement.”¹ Those natural desires (combined with social and media pressure) often mean we decide to take on home projects.

As with any decision comes the Instagram spam of satisfying before and afters and the dreadful spring cleaning checklist. Not to say these lists are wrong or bad–we agree that there’s a time to clean our baseboards and descale the faucet on the kitchen sink. Even our mentor in the KonMari Method, Marie Kondo, provides tips for spring cleaning rituals. The problem with these checklists is that they often result in making us feel terrible about cleaning our house.

Spring cleaning is no small undertaking.

Perhaps you have a busy Spring full of business trips taking you away every week, or perhaps your kids’ activities make the family calendar look like a logistical nightmare.

Maybe it isn’t about your availability at all. Maybe your approach is creating more problems. For example, every time you try to check a task off the spring cleaning list, you end up adding several more. Like when you cleaned those alleged baseboards, you uncovered a stack of fallen bills you need to open. Remember the children’s book “If you give a mouse a cookie” ? Each action leads to more actions to be done.

Spring cleaning can feel like one step forward and three steps back.

No one wants to aim for a small springtime achievement only to end up in an endless battle with your own stuff. You question if it’s worth it, but you’ve already seen the baseboards, and it’s too late. You can no longer look at your house and feel cozy, because you know it needs your TLC.

What do you do when you’ve decided to spring clean but feel like you’re moving in circles?

You probably realize that it’s tough to clean when there seems to be so much stuff in the way, which brings us to our pro tip #1.

1. Start by decluttering!

A question we get a lot from our clients is - should you clean first, then organize, or organize and then clean?

Marie Kondo reiterates in a post about spring cleaning, “cleaning is not the same as tidying. Your house will never be truly clean if you have not tidied your belongings first.” The idea behind tidying before cleaning is that it’s easier to clean when there’s less in the way.

Instead of using a checklist about a mile long for all the small things that need cleaning, pick one priority room (a kitchen) or a couple small priority spaces (entry hall and laundry area). Keep the scale small.

2. Set a timer

In our work as professional organizers, our clients book sessions of 3-6 hours, depending on the scope of the project, but plenty can also get done in 1-2 hours! Setting time limits is important for your peace of mind as well as to limit the physical strain on your body. Maybe your max time is 3 hours. Awesome–make sure you set another timer for 1 hour and then take a short break! Even professionals take mental breaks to stay fresh.

3. Have supplies at the ready

Grab some helpful materials to stay organized and clean as you go. We recommend sticky notes and a bold marker to keep your piles straight, a microfiber cloth to quickly remove dust from items and surfaces, a tool to cut things (scissors or a boxcutter), and several bags to collect trash, recycling, and various donations.

Bag up any obvious trash/recycling and keep those bags nearby for when the deeper digging begins.

It’s important that you do your best to keep working and stay in the room. I repeat, because this is very important: STAY IN THE ROOM!

4. Practice “mindful” sorting

Pick one fixture, furniture item, storage, or surface and begin making mini piles of stuff. Open everything in that small area. If you’re lucky, things will belong together. Otherwise, you might start to see that there are many different items hiding among the ones that belong.

Once empty, clean out this small area while it’s completely clutter-free.

Use a microfiber cloth, a wet wipe, a handheld vacuum–whatever is handy!

Next, it’s time to make organized piles.

Pick up an item, ask yourself “what is this” and “where does it belong”? Piles might include “bathroom” “kitchen” “laundry” “garage” “junk drawer” etc. Use your marker and post-its to label your piles to avoid confusion later. If the item doesn’t have an obvious home, make a pile called “Needs New Home” and come back to those items later.

Here is where mindfulness comes in: while you are sorting items into piles, do not let your mind wander about the items or let them take you to another room or activity. Keep your mind present on the task at hand. And remember: Stay in the room!

5. Deal with your piles

Examine each pile, pare down, and put away

Do we need crumbled vitamins from a Ziploc bag? Is the business card of the crystal shop around the corner necessary? Are any of those small electronics outdated or broken? It’s time to make some decisions and make the piles a little smaller.

Tip: Fellow Austinites, recycle those broken or outdated electronics at the Austin Reuse and Recycling Drop-Off Center.

6. Take a break and repeat

That’s right. You didn’t see a break on the other spring cleaning checklists, but you’ve been working really hard and making tons of small decisions. Get some water, a meal or a snack and take AT LEAST fifteen minutes to rest. Then, time to repeat steps 3-5 for another small area or storage space.

As you continue through the larger space, use your existing piles to better understand the volume of your belongings.

When you see that you have eight scotch tapes, but they don’t quite fit back into the same drawer, you’ll better understand if you would like a limit on how many tapes you own (keeping your favorites and the ones with the most life left in them, the others can go to places like Austin Creative Reuse). If you decide to keep all eight, perhaps you keep a family of them in the kitchen utility drawer and another family of them with your gift-wrapping supplies in a hall closet.

Depending on how much space you have, either return the “final” version of the mini piles to the area you pulled them from or leave them out to later combine with other mini piles from the rest of the space–don’t forget to make sticky labels!

Bookmark your progress and reset

If you are going to call it a day and pick it up later, it’s important to make sure the space is livable in the meantime. Re-store things with their labels, make temporary bins to hold things that don’t have a permanent home yet. If there are surfaces in your work area, try to clear some space to make it look more peaceful. If you are working somewhere where more items are likely to join, keep some empty containers handy if possible to integrate them into the system.

Perhaps you finished decluttering the whole area–awesome! Go you! Now you have one thing under control, and you can tackle the next.

Do you find decluttering to be a difficult process and wonder how anyone successfully discards anything?

Maybe our list sounds as difficult as the others, and you wouldn’t be alone. So many people struggle when it comes to discarding items, making organized systems, and keeping up with housework. If you have ADHD, for example, it might be really hard for you to focus on the task of organizing without help. If you are going through a difficult time, it may be emotionally difficult to part with things that seem silly to keep. You might be new to organizing in general, and in that case, it would be like learning to play a new instrument–it takes studying and practice.

At Organized for Good, we work regularly with clients who plan to declutter their homes. We help with accountability, provide professional guidance, and help you create functional systems for YOU–no one else. We don’t get hung up on “how it’s done” because we want you to be able to keep your home organized your way–no matter what that looks like.

To learn more about our decluttering services and hear from past clients, check out our offerings here.

Our goal is to help people build the home of their dreams and keep it for the years to come. We hope this article helps you do the work on your own or leads you to other helpful resources to make progress towards your home organization.

Happy spring cleaning!

¹Clark, Josh. n.d. “Why Do We Traditionally Clean Our Homes At the Beginning of Spring?” Home and Garden. Accessed April 8, 2024. https://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/household-hints-tips/cleaning-organizing/spring-clean-in-spring.htm.

Most spring cleaning checklists are unhelpful — here’s our top 6 tips for real people