Your Guide to Spring Cleaning

Summer is just around the corner and with only a few weeks left in spring, it might be time to get your spring cleaning over and done with. It can be a daunting task and, often, you don’t know what needs to be cleaned until you find the mess, so I thought I’d provide you with a few cleaning tips that you may not have thought about:

• Throw out expired medications and old cosmetics – Often, we don’t check the expiry date on the pill bottle until we need to take an aspirin. If you go through your cabinet and figure out what needs to be thrown out now, you can replace it and have it when you actually need it. Additionally, taking expired medications can have undesirable side effects. It may be beneficial to go through makeup, creams, and other cosmetics to toss ones that you haven’t used in the last six months or that have changed their scent or consistency.

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  Going through your closet can be a daunting task [Credit: Steve Cole/Getty Images]

  Go through your closet – With warm weather on the horizon, it can be helpful to take stock of the clothes you have in your closets and dressers. Do you have heavy winter wear taking up a lot of space that could be put into storage? Do you have shirts, pants, or shorts that no longer fit or that you don’t wear and could be donated to used clothing or thrift stores? Are you holding on to old socks and underwear that should be thrown out and replaced? You can answer all these questions with a quick scan through your closet and maybe free up some space for newer, more stylish wares.

• Go through your fridge and pantry – You probably throw out moldy bread and the like on a weekly basis, but there’s certain foods that get neglected when we do our usual clean outs such as stale, open bags of crackers, cookies or cereal, old spices that have lost their flavour, and jams, mustards, and oils that you’ve had since before you can remember. These are things that might be good to either find a use for them or throw them out. It’s never good to waste food though, so make sure to take note of what you throw out and avoid buying such a large quantity in the future.

• Do a virtual clean-up – It’s easy to forget another part of our life that can cause us stress if it is cluttered: our devices. Pictures, text messages and unused apps can be erased from cellphones and e-mails, internet browsing histories, and programs without a purpose can be purged from our computers. The result might even make the device run a little quicker!

• Move some furniture – Strength and space permitting, it may give you a whole new perspective on your abode if you flip some furniture around. Moving a couch out from in front of a window can let in more light and moving a table and chairs from the center of the room to the side can open up more space to move around. It’s all up to your imagination. Get creative, you never know what might work better in your space!

• Deep clean – When cleaning on a daily or weekly basis, we sometimes settle for “good enough”. With spring cleaning, now is the time to do the more onerous tasks like moving your couch to vacuum underneath it and removing light fixture covers to wash and dust them. Often, you’ll find things were a lot dirtier than you imagined and cleaning them up can help if you have allergies to dust.

You can also find lists on Pinterest that give you a schedule for doing infrequent cleaning tasks like flipping your mattress, cleaning your fridge, stove, and microwave, and changing your shower curtain. If you haven’t done these things in the last year, you can always start now and follow the schedule going forward.

Spring cleaning is the time to really get in there and overhaul your space. You’ll feel better for it and you’ll realize how amazing it can be to declutter your life just as the warm weather is here to stay.

What are some of the things you do to clean up your life? Let me know in the comments.