Fancy A Spot Of Spring Cleaning? How To Shake Off The Winter Slump & Declutter Your Life

It’s official: spring is well and truly here and there’s never been a better time to shake off your winter slump and embrace the brighter months.

If there’s one thing that spring is synonymous with, it’s fresh starts. One of the easiest ways that you can make a fresh start right now is to give your life a bit of a spring clean. Is it time you cleared out all the old in your life so you could make way for the new? Is it time you decluttered and freed up some space in your home as well as your mind?

Often, excessive clutter is a symptom and a cause of stress. Believe it or not but clutter can have a severely negative impact on your life. It can distract you, weigh you down and in general, it can invite even more chaos in your life.

Tackling clutter can sometimes seem like an insurmountable task, especially if you don’t know how or where to start. Here are a few tips to help you break free from clutter, get cleaning and give yourself a much-needed ‘spring’ in your step...

The Rules

Decluttering can ease mental tension and lower your stress levels

When you’re getting ready to declutter your life, it’s important to adhere to two main rules:

1. Everything you own should have value, whether it’s functional or sentimental. Determin an object’s worth by asking yourself if you’d grab it if your house were on fire.

2. Focus on one thing at a time. If you try to declutter several rooms or areas of your life at once, you won’t finish. So take things slow and move from one task to the other.

Decluttering Your Work Space:

A clutter-free workspace will mean increased productivity and a better ability to focus

Getting clutter out of your workspace is essential for increased productivity and focus. Here’s how to do it.

Start with your desk: Clear everything off/out of your desk and give it a good clean. Next, sort through all of the stuff that was in/on your desk. Get rid of everything that you don’t need and sort the remains. File any important documents, put your office supplies in a designated drawer and have an inbox for all incoming papers. Every day, sort through your incoming papers and deal with them immediately – do not keep them on top of your desk.

Declutter your computer: Get rid of any files and programmes that you don’t need. Organise any important files that you have saved and regularly delete old, unused files.

Declutter Your Home

A clutter-free home means a more relaxing atmosphere

Next to work, home is where we spend the vast majority of our time so it’s important to keep your home tidy and clutter-free.

Simplify your rooms: Declutter your house one room at a time and use the following system: start by cleaning the floor. After the floor, move on to flat surfaces like shelves, countertops etc. Move onto furniture. Next, tackle the closets. When faced with objects, adhere to the rules.

Declutter Your Life

A clutter-free mind means a happier life overall

Decluttering your home and your work area will work wonders on your mental state but you can take your spring cleaning one step further.

Reduce your commitments: So often our lives are cluttered with various things that we need to do at work, home, school, with friends etc. Take a look at each area of your life and write down your commitments. See if there’s anything on there that feels more like a chore than anything else. A good rule here is to keep the commitments that make you happy and bring your joy and dump the ones that leave you stressed-out or feeling drained.

Revamp your routines: Structure is an important part of decluttering your life, so if you don’t have a weekly routine set one in place. For example, instead of doing your washing several times during the week, do it all on one day. Write down all of your weekly/daily chores and tasks and then plan a routine from there. Once your routine is firmly in place, you’ll find that you start getting things done faster.