Spring seems to bring out the organizing in me – more so than any other time of the year. I think this may because the rest of the year seems to be so busy. I’ll usually start spring cleaning right after the holidays. Beginning at one end of the house working my way to the other end – I clean from top to bottom washing walls, windows, curtains, blinds, drawers cleaned out and organized, closets cleaned out, and all furniture washed and moved with the entire floor being cleaned and the room totally decluttered. I try to leave no stone unturned – except for the ceilings, which are nasty popcorn ceilings – they get vacuumed.
When I am done – not only do I have clean rooms – I am also left with several boxes to distribute elsewhere. There are boxes of items to place on Freecycle, boxes of recyclable items, boxes to take to Goodwill. Sometimes I forgo going to Goodwill and make those donations to the Epilepsy Foundation simply because they come right to my home to pick up the donation. And of course there are bags upon bags of trash that make it to the dumpster and there are boxes of items to sell.
Although I like donating items, I like selling items just as much. I like that I am putting physical cash back in my pocket. One way to make that money is yard sales – except they are just too much work and too time consuming for me. Instead I will sell items on Craig’s list, MusicMagpie, Ebay, Listia – online sites. One item I don’t sell is cell phones. I could get money for cell phones, but I prefer to recycle those at Petsmart. It does my heart good to know the animals benefit from them.
When all is said and done, I like the feeling I am left with after spring cleaning and decluttering. It’s an empowering feeling of being in control of my home. Of course, decluttering takes place all year long in small doses too…like cleaning out clothing drawers of clothes that no longer fit or won’t be worn or magazine piles…stuff like that.
I’m halfway done the task this spring. I kind of got sidetracked and decided that I needed to paint the living/dining/entry way this year. That’s okay though – the walls really look refreshed 🙂
When do you do your major decluttering and big cleaning? Are you one to do it in the spring? The fall? What feeling are you left with when all is said and done?
*Image courtesy of kongsky / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
12 Responses to “Spring Cleaning – Sell, Donate, Recycle, Organize”
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I didn’t know you could recycle your old cells at Petmart – what an awesome idea! I have four in my desk drawer that I can take in.
i hate cleaning. spring, summer, fall, winter, anytime. hate it. because i have so much stuff and nowhere to put it all. but i can’t throw things away because i just might need it later on and i’m too poor to be replacing things. or i’m attached to it for sentimental reasons. really sucks living in a one br apartment with no closets and no room for a curio or bookcase. and we have to keep all our bathroom stuff in our “bedroom” because we share a bathroom with the near-stranger in the other downstairs apartment, and his guests like to use our stuff – and again, too poor to replace stuff. i think to myself that one day, when we have our own home or a bigger apartment, it’d stay clean because we’d have places to put things… but i’m sure i’d still hate cleaning and it’d be just as messy.
Popcorn ceilings, we used to have those. We painted them a few coats and no more dropping popcorn balls.
Bobbie Anne
Ours have been painted and like yours – there aren’t anymore droppings. That said – the popcorn on our ceiling is the ugliest, biggest popcorn I’ve ever seen :(.
I love that you donate stuff as well as give things away. I can’t tell you what a huge blessing it has been (with three rapidly growing children) to receive hand-me-downs. Haha. It’s smart that you sell things too though – putting cash back in your pocket is always a good thing. 😉
Shannon – I LOVED hand-me-downs when my daughter was younger and didn’t really care about what she wore. I got a lot of clothing from Freecyclers and friends. Clothing kids can be very expensive – it’s great when we can save 🙂
I think I will try your idea of doing a complete room at a time. Maybe by using the way of completely cleaning one room, I won’t get side tracked so easily. It will make my job seem much smaller this way!
Fay – it really does help me to do just one room at a time. If not, I too get side tracked, and I get overwhelmed. You’ll have to come back and let me know if this works for you 🙂
I think it is a very good idea to start with one room at a time before moving to the next…I have a very short attention span and get distracted easily. I will start this project today with the smallest room, the bathroom. We’ve accumulated a lot of ‘stuff’ that is not needed.
I did not know petsmart recycled phones! I will take mine there if it helps the pets! I always recycle my cans, but I would love to do more.
I find the thought overwhelming, so I have to take it a little at a time….usually around Earth Day so that I can donate, recycle and reuse.
Mell – it can be very overwhelming. I was just thinking of how overwhelmed I am feeling about cleaning out the room that was my ‘shed’ for nearly 5 years until we had our shed built last summer. That room WAS clean before Xmas – everything had a home and then bam! It now looks like a bomb went off in there. I get that there’s been no organization for all these years before the shed came along and I get that things are still being moved from one room to another – but it really is stressful and overwhelming just to look in that room. My plan is to start tackling it this week though. When I get overwhelmed on a project – I will lie in bed before going to sleep, picturing the room in my mind and decide which part of the room makes the most sense to begin at. Once I have that figured out – I am usually good to go. It may take me a few days to get the room to where I want it to be – but that’s okay – I’ve completed the task 🙂