put a little spring in your cleaning

So I thought I would share some tips on spring cleaning, because I love spring cleaning — this is my favourite time of year. Normally, I am extremely enthusiastic about spring cleaning and I get started too early. But these past couple of months have been a bit busy and hectic, and my mind hasn’t  been quite in it… until now. I realize that making a list is enough to get me in the mood. So here are my tips that help me make my spring cleaning much more enjoyable. 🙂

1. So first tip: make a list. Even if you aren’t in the mood but you know you have to do it. Make the list and it will actually get you excited about that wonderful feeling of having a super clean home. Yes, think about the result — you’ll have plenty of time to actually enjoy the process.

2. Go crazy with that list. Take a few days to compile it. Walk around your home, make note of all the things you want to clean. Then start a new list and organize all those listy things and sort them out by room. This will help you stay on track and get it done. If you clean your window in one room, and then clean the carpet in the other room, it won’t feel as accomplished. And remember how good it feels to check things off a list. 

3. Ok you’ve got your list, now what? Aren’t you excited? I am now! Plan it out. You could do it all in one day, maybe. But don’t rush it, and don’t overwhelm yourself. Plan a couple days, and make time for other things. Plan it out over a week if you have to. Just remember to go room by room.

4. Multitask your cleaning. Start the laundry before you actually start cleaning, so once those curtains or sofa covers are dry, your room is super clean to accept it back into it’s home.

5. Work from top to bottom. This is especially true for the kitchen, so all the dust and stuff falls to the floor and then do a massive floor clean. And dust then sweep/vacuum — you want to make sure you catch all that dust!

6. When you’re ready to clean, play some damn music, and play it LOUD. It helps if you can sing along.

7. When you are all done, sit back and have a drink. Just don’t have too many so you don’t make a mess in your freshly clean home. Maybe take it outside by that point. 😉

 

Remember that cleaning doesn’t have to a chore. It can be extremely therapeutic, and it can help clear your mind of all those jumbled thoughts that collected over the winter. And you will thank yourself for all your hard work because it might even help you keep it clean longer. Happy spring!

bathroom storage

This month Raquel and I planned on posting about things that can help us get organized and ready for Spring. I am ridiculously excited for the warm weather to arrive, but with that comes a lot of Spring cleaning and preparation. I’m not the type of person who can fold away her winter gear without washing and preparing everything for the storage units. It makes me feel better (and cleaner) knowing that everything is set and ready to go for next year! With the things that remain behind – and many do – I think about how I am going to organize it in a way that collects the least amount of dust, and leaves me with the most amount of room. I also tend to donate a lot during this time of year. With things that I don’t use, or haven’t used in the last year, I donate to my local salvation army. I don’t like having things linger around the house that I know someone else can make great use of.

I came across this wonderful idea on Pinterest (of course) but I had to modify it a little bit. You see on Pinterest the person had a clear shoe storage, and all I could find was this brown one, and they appeared to have a wider door, whereas mine was pretty narrow and therefore I had to cut a lot of the ‘shoe storage’ off in order to fit it on my door (with the lovely help of my boyfriend).

We bought the shoe storage from Home Outfitters for $9.00 and we had a couple of screws laying around to screw it into the door. It’s a pretty straight forward project. Make sure to screw the shoe storage onto the door and once it’s securely fastened on there, you can start storing your bathroom essentials.

Under our sink it was pretty messy, as you can see, and once we put up the storage we were able to store toilet paper and paper towel rolls underneath our sink – not to mention the extra amount of room we had left.

There you have it, and easy two-step organization project, that will leave you feeling better knowing that everything underneath your sink is neatly organized!

organizing your closet

So this month, since it is a spring-cleaning kinda month, Bojana and I will be talking about tips for spring cleaning, organization and all that super fun stuff. If there is anything to know about Bojana and my friendship, is that we often bond over cleaning and organizing things. It’s just something we love to do!

Anyway, I recently organized my closet and I thought I would share some quick tips when sorting through your own threads. I often have to reorganize my closet because space is limited, and I can sometimes get lazy about putting my clothes away. But I wanted to find a way to help me stay organized, even when I am feeling lazy. I also went through all my items and had a serious talk with myself regarding whether I would wear that item ever again. And I found away to keep track of what I actually wear!

So first thing I suggest is explore pinterest. There will be tons of ideas there on how to organize your clothes and accessories. One great idea I found was the scarf holder. Now it’s not the prettiest thing, but sometimes the most practical thing is not the prettiest and you have to make a decision. I decided that it was going in my closet so only I would be looking at it anyway. This is a pretty easy DIY for a scarf-holder too. All you need is a hanger and shower rings. I had metal rings so I used those instead. Slap those rings on the hanger and start feeding those scarves through!

Clearly I have a lot of scarves, and may need to consider spreading it out on two hangers. Anyway, any sort of variation of this will work. The idea is that you have a place where you can quickly put it away without needing the option to throw it on the bed/chair/etc. So far this has been very effective.

Another item I needed was a belt holder, something both my husband and I could use. The current situation was a small basket, but that got messy easily. I decided to use another hanger for this and use clothing pins and metal “s” hangers I had lying around. I liked this solution because again, it was perfect for when we putting away are clothes. It didn’t allow any laziness.

I also found the perfect way to fold a sock… my current sock situation involved a basket and me stuffing as many socks and stockings as I could. This sock-folding method is super easy and it looks really nice.

The last and main thing I did was go through all the items of clothing in my closet. I used stickers to mark everything, so that in three months or so, I could come back and see what I was wearing or not wearing. If it still has a sticker, then I had to consider getting rid of it.

I also sorted my closet first by type of clothing (sweater/top/dress) and then organized within that by colour. 

And that’s it! I ended up with a really clean looking closet, and so far, its much easier to maintain. You can tell it’s a bit cramped so I really needed to make good use of the space. The idea to find something that works for you and your habits. And just to note, the brown paper bags on the bottom right are full of clothes that I will be getting rid of/giving away! 😉

Happy organizing! 🙂