7 Things To Spring Clean In Your Life This Year

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The dawning of spring’s daffodils and sunshine can be a good excuse to give our lives a little refresh, but you can choose any day of the year to get out of a rut and take a look at what you can change. There’s more to it than just deep cleaning the house, too. Here’s a look at 7 things to spring clean in your life to leave you feeling organised, energised and refreshed.

7 Things To Spring Clean In Your Life

1. Physical Decluttering & Organising At Home

Whether it’s general “stuff”, mounds of paperwork or oodles of clothing, a good declutter of our physical space can be oddly satisfying. There are so many books and even TV programs on the matter now because it’s not always easy, especially if you like to keep stuff “just in case” or you struggle with indecision. Add in health problems, chronic pain and fatigue, and just the idea of it is exhausting.

This is another task to do in bits and pieces so you can pace yourself. Set small tasks, either by time allowance, so you do 10 minute slots of activity, or by item, so you tidy out one drawer at a time. 

You can do a little social good along the way, too. Recycle what you can in household recycling or to outlets, like H&M for clothes and textiles or to Boots for beauty products. Reuse or upcycle something you love and would actually use again to give it a new lease of life. Donate what you can to charity.

Ask yourself how you’d feel when looking back in future if you threw X, Y or Z away, would you regret it? Ask yourself how often you use the item, and whether there’s any genuine chance you’d use it again. Ask yourself if you’d miss it if it weren’t there. Ask yourself if you even noticed the item in the last few years until you just picked it up. 

It’s not just about decluttering, so unless you have serious storage constraints you don’t need to throw everything away. If you have keepsakes and such, keep them in good condition. For everything else, can you tidy up and better organise some of it? Storage boxes and organisers are in abundance in stores and online these days and they can prove very useful. I’m fond of labelling with my Phomemo embossed label maker thingybobby, too.

2. Your Emails & Messages

Emails can be hard to keep on top of and before you know it, you’re inundated. Set aside some time and take them in chunks, doing 5 or 10 minutes or however long you can manage here and there – go through all those unopened emails, delete the junk, send replies, deal with necessary tasks, flag or pin important messages, set up folders to organise your inbox. You might also have messages on social media that need actioning, so don’t forget those.

3. Re-Assess Your Relationships & Boundaries

We’d all like to hope that the friends and family we have will be warm, caring, considerate and loving, but sadly that’s not always the case. It’s harder with family to walk away but if there are boundaries being broken, now might be the time to consider what you can do about it.

When it comes to friends, in real life or online, are those relationships positive? Or do they make you feel used, abused or otherwise negative? If there are things you need to say or do, think it through and make a decision. If you need to say “no” to someone or even walk away from that relationship, empower yourself to do so as part of your own self-care.

Related Reading : The Importance of Personal Boundaries & How To Set Them

4. Medications, Supplements & Medical Paraphernalia 

Being chronically ill gets to be time-consuming and space-destroying, with medications, supplements, lifestyle items, pain management tools and medical appliances seeping into every room. Are there any things you can tidy up and organise?

With medications and supplements, can you better organise these to make your days a little easier? Would you benefit from a dosette box or pill container? Go through your medical cabinet; are there any out of date items that need to be disposed of? Are you short on anything that you need to replenish?

5. Your Skincare Routine

Your skin is your body’s largest organ, yet it often gets pushed back on our priorities list, especially when times get busy. Adopting a manageable skincare routine, one that allows for flexibility when you need it, can help your skin inside and out. 

Start with your face. Cleansing, moisturising, serums, exfoliation, face masks. Get the products you need together, and in the process get rid of what has expired or been open too long. Some beauty and toiletry products will have a ‘best before’ date but others may just have an hourglass image to show how many months it stays at its best once opened. Do you need anything else or is there something you’d like to try to target any particular skin complaints? Then think about the routine – maybe you want a more complex regimen of several products, or maybe you want to keep it simple with just a cleanser and moisturiser each morning and evening. Do what works for you.

Then think about your body, even though the idea of taking clothes off to moisturise in the winter is a painful thought. Even body moisturising once a month is better than never at all for 8 months of the year. 

Don’t forget your feet. Dry skin, not to mention any health issues like circulatory problems or diabetes, can lead to bigger concerns, so prevention is a good idea. Could you every so often try a foot bath, foot scrub, foot peel? Could you moisturise your tootsies once a week or fortnight? Again, whatever works for you and what your skin needs.

6. Digital Detoxing 

This has become a trendy phrase, but digital detoxing can be helpful, especially if you find yourself wasting time or feeling negative after your internet use. Reducing or having periods of time where you steer clear of certain online activities, which for many people means all social media channels, can be a way to reset yourself. 

If you aimlessly scroll and end up procrastinating a lot, this one might be for you. If you end up comparing yourself and your life to the glossy images on Instagram, this one might be for you. If you feel your blood pressure rising looking at the comments section in the Daily Mail app or feel anxious reading Tweets on X, then this one might be for you, too. 

Take a minute to see what your relationship with the internet is and whether you feel a detox might be beneficial. Then decide how to do it. You could set a timer while doing other things and avoid using social media until the timer goes off, you could go a whole week (or longer) without social media at all, or you could do it any other way that suits your preferences. 

7. Your Mental Clutter 

Mental clutter and overthinking can weigh heavily on us and exhaust us in equal measure. Have you ever had the odd moment in your life where that heaviness lifted? Can you remember how it felt? If so, try to reach that feeling again. If you can’t remember ever feeling it, then now might be the time to do something about it. 

Emptying our mental clutter right this moment and keeping it light forever more is not realistic for many of us. It’s likely going to be incredibly hit and miss and very difficult, but learning to calm your mind even a little can make a huge difference. 

If you overthink, over-stress and carry a lot of mental baggage in your brain, is there any way you can let a little of it go, or temporarily put it down from time to time? There are different methods for managing it and you need to see what works for you. Meditation and mindfulness are popular options, but so too are keeping a diary, working through it all and talking it out with a friend or specialist, focusing on self-care, facing head-on the things you stress about, using stress-relief and distractions, and factoring in small joys to your daily life. It won’t be easy but it will be worth it because even a tiny declutter or a temporary ceasefire in your mind can allow you to breathe again and to see the brightness in your days that bit more.

Related Reading : 

• 16 Books To Declutter Your Home & Spring Clean Your Life
• 4 Things To Remember When Pacing For Chronic Illness, Pain or Fatigue

Caz  ♥

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