How to spring clean your home
Transform the areas that may not be working
With careful consideration and planning, you need never again look upon an accumulated mess with dread, enabling you to spend more time with your family and friends with a clearer mind and a stronger sense of focus.
Find out how to declutter your house with Tammy Moir's expert tips.
Living Room
Ideally the living room should meet the needs of all family members equally. This is a great way to check to see if your family life is in balance. Too much clutter here is suggestive of an imbalance in the amount of quality time your family shares. The room needs to be free to create an inviting atmosphere to talk and engage as a family. Keep in mind, schoolwork and other similar items should be kept to a minimum and have their allotted cubby hole or area. This room provides the greatest benefit when it is not too cluttered with children’s toys; this in itself constructs an unhealthy balance for parents and older siblings.
With winter over, couch cushions and throw rugs would have collected a lot more dust than usual in the last three months. Giving them a good airing in the sun is akin to shaking off any remnants of old thoughts and habits linked to winter to mentally prepare you for what lies ahead.
Kitchen
Where the lounge can sum up the needs of the whole family, it is the kitchen that goes one step further in the balance stakes by representing your own personal inner order. You will find that the underlying cause of clutter is attributed to poor time management.
An untidy bench is showing you in more ways than one that discipline and structure is missing from your daily routine. Begin by compartmentalising everything in the cupboards; there should be nothing that is not stored correctly, from cans to open packets of pasta through to pots and pans. The cleaner the kitchen, the greater your time management skills will be in the other areas of your life.
Bedroom
General untidiness in the bedroom is largely linked towards personal relationships with partners. If clothes are jumbled and there appears to be no obvious division of space, you may want to look at each other's personal needs and if they are being met. Are you giving each other enough space to pursue personal goals? By giving each other space in the bedroom, and by separating clothes, shoes and personal items, you are acknowledging that you respect and support their choices in their chosen career and interests.
Untidy clothes indicate a need to look towards your own personal drive and commitment to projects. The underlying issue tends to be career oriented. You need to recycle or give away any clothes that you no longer wear, by holding on to them you are holding onto old thought patterns connected to your career choices. By reorganising this area you can then turn your attention towards other achievements. Order in this area shows that you have great personal strength in achieving your own set goals.
Storage
Storage areas can easily become the dumping ground for any unused or broken items around the house and can too easily equate to an unnecessary burden. It is equivalent to holding on to all the things that may have upset you in the past, things that you can’t let go of. Alleviate the unwanted stress that you probably never knew was there by making the most out of hard rubbish days. Reorganise the area by adding extra shelves and hanging things on hooks. Order here shows that you are not sweeping issues under the carpet and that you are willing as an individual to deal with problems as they arise. It shows that you do not hold on to old issues or problems, but let them go.
The sense of satisfaction and mental clarity derived from spring cleaning will be reward enough. It provides you with the impetus for a new and improved way of living, because deep down you know that things can no longer go on the way they have and you yourself are ready for a change. Spring is just the right season. NH
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