Make This Year Your Last Spring Cleaning

March 22, 2016 by Ed Becker

Spring cleaning is a normal ‘season’ for many families. As the weather gets warmer and we have more sunlight, we feel more energetic. Airing out the stale indoor air, cleaning the dust that has built up and doing that deep cleaning that you avoided during the dreary winter is energizing and freeing. Having a fresh, clean house that is bright and shiny can boost even the deepest winter blues. It also will help reduce the allergens and toxins that have built up during the cold weather.

Spring cleaning also helps to de-stress your life. Clutter and disorganization are stressful, even if we do not realize how it affects us, it does create stress. When you live in a cluttered and disorganized environment it creates mental discontent and distracts your mind from doing important things.

De-clutter your work-space

If you have a home office or a space that you do most of your work it must be organized and de-cluttered. Staying focused on work will not happen if your home or office are messy.

• Keep your desk area clean, no clutter
• Have a trashcan nearby so trash will not pile up
• Clean out your email inbox daily, or setup rules to send emails to the right folder before it hits your inbox
• Clean up daily, never let things build up
• Do not multitask, it is actually less productive than single focused work

Keeping everything in its place the minute you are done with it reduces clutter to zero and allows you keep distractions to a minimum. Take time to deal with anything that comes in the house or your office immediately and be done with it, do not handle it more than once. By keeping a constant mindset of no clutter along with a regular daily and weekly cleaning routine your home and office will be much less stressful and distracting.

How to keep organized and decluttered

If you have a home office, it can be even more tricky to keep your home and office neat year round. If your home office is not as organized as you would like it to be, take this spring to deep clean. Once you have a clean and open space to use as a foundation you can create a plan to keep it organized on a daily basis and cleaned regularly. But you must keep some things in mind in order to avoid everything to get messy right away.

• Have a place for everything, do not leave anything where it does not belong
• Papers and mail should be dealt with immediately!
• If you buy something new, the old one must go
• Do not bring household items into your office space if they do not have a purpose or place in your office.

For small business owners who work from their homes, having a cluttered disorganized environment can cause detrimental issues. If you work from your home and the clutter distracts you from work tasks, it can definitely hurt your business. Being distracted by family issues and household chores is a constant struggle for home workers. Keeping an organized home and reducing clutter helps to alleviate distractions and stress.