We have all heard about spring cleaning, but what about spring decluttering? As spring begins, we all want our homes to be a little brighter and airier, which is why frenzied spring-cleaning starts. However, what we should be prioritising is decluttering our homes and garages as things tend to pile up in winter.
“Winter is a time for relaxing and hibernating, which is why our homes become messy and filled with unnecessary items… it’s just too cold to do anything,” comments Mario Correia, brand manager for Milton. He continues to explain that since we are more interested in sitting back and keeping warm, we tend to overlook small chores and procrastinate on others.
What we don’t know is that when our home or garage becomes cluttered, winter dust settles and builds up around and on the objects. Dust is made up of bacteria, viruses, and fungi, so when it is time to declutter, you will need to clean and sterilise all surfaces. Using a sterilising cleaning agent, such as Milton’s Sterilising Surface Spray, helps to clean surfaces and remove any germs. Milton’s Sterilising Surface Spray kills 99.9% of known germs within five minutes leaving your surfaces clean and germ free.
So, now it is time to declutter your home, throw out what you don’t need, and provide some springtime TLC, but how do you start. Correia recommends the following tips:
- Put away your throws and blankets. With the weather warming up, there is no need to have them available. By putting them away (where they belong) you are already removing something in the room, that doesn’t belong.
- Create a space at your front door for shoes, handbags, and schoolbags. This way as soon as everyone comes home, it can be bags down and shoes off, and there will be no tripping over your son’s size 10 shoes.
- Sometimes we don’t even see the clutter, and therefore it is good to get a friend’s opinion. They will have less emotional attachment to items, as well as be able to see the items that take up too much space in the room and don’t need to be there.
- A work desk is the one place where accounts, pieces of paper and other items that don’t have a permanent “home” land up. Go through all these items, throwing away the ones that you don’t need, and filing the ones that need to be kept.
- Create a sorting method. One idea is to take four boxes and label them – throw away, donate, relocate, and keep. This way you will know what to do with all the items after you finished sorting through them.
Garages can become the one place in the house where anything (and everything) goes. Soon, finding your way around the clutter becomes impossible. To clear out your garage, try the following:
- Be ruthless in your decisions and get rid of those items you have used or even seen in the last year.
- Use plastic boxes to store items such as festive decorations, old books, sporting goods and a few memorabilia. Make sure to label these boxes so that you can always find what you are looking for.
- When sorting out, don’t avoid already packed container boxes; just because the items inside are packed away doesn’t mean that you still need them.
- Put all tools in a specific spot and return it there once you have used it. Put in a workbench where all DIY activities can take place, and where all your tools and gadgets can be kept for easy use. This is also makes it one place you must clean when you are done.
- Hang bicycles on the wall to keep the out of the way as well as easily accessible.
Once your home is decluttered and everything is in its right place, it will feel different and more peaceful. Also knowing that you have cleaned and sterilised areas that haven’t been cleaned in a while, provides you with a peace of mind that your home is clean, neat and ready for summer.
