Wow!  Next week is already the first day of Spring!!

On the first day of Spring, I think about the fact that people do what used to be called Spring Cleaning. Wash heavy blankets and rugs, put away winter sweaters and coats, put out the warm weather patio furniture. 

Do people even do that anymore?  Or are we too busy buying/collecting things and not considering that we should weed out at least one item for every new one we take in? The more items we have, the more time it takes to care for them. That adds up to Physical fatigue.  Doesn’t that happen to us mentally as well?  We take in more information from family, clients, and social media.  But how often do we process it and weed some of it out? That adds up to Mental fatigue.

Spring Cleaning in your life does not have to be a tremendously overwhelming chore.

Physically:

1. Develop the mindset that for every item purchased going forward, you should use it to REPLACE an item.  One in, one out. This mindset can at least stabilize the number of items in your home.
2. Gradually, as you replace items that are used up, rethink the necessity of that item.  Does it really need to be replaced?  How often did you use it?  Do you have something else already equally as good?  I am first thinking of clothing.  Do we really need to replace that jacket that developed a hole, or did we only wear it once a year to begin with, and we can live without purchasing a new one?  I think food items fit in this category as well.  When you create your grocery shopping list, do you really need to replace that empty bag of chips?  Or do you need to replace it with some fresh veggies instead?
3. As we Spring Clean our “stuff,” we Spring Clean our Time and our Energy. Fewer clothes mean fewer clothes to wash, fewer choices to have to contemplate each morning or each season.  Fewer food options mean less contemplation of “what’s for dinner” as well as often healthier foods to reach for. Fewer pieces of furniture mean less cleaning/dusting.

Mentally:

• Write things down!  This eliminates a brain that often feels “too full.”  This process also helps to walk away from challenging information and return to it with a fresh perspective.  Ask this of others as well.  When family or clients are giving you too much verbal information, they can be handing over their clutter without doing a cleaning on it first.  Putting information down on paper can sort through that clutter so that everyone can process what is really trying to be shared.
• Evaluate the benefits of your social media interactions.  Does this part of your life need some Spring cleaning as well?

Spring cleaning frees our mind to think about what is important physically and mentally and gives us new energy!