Five Tips To Make Spring Cleaning A Breeze This Year

Spring – or at least some semblance of it – has sprung. And crocuses aren't the only things popping out of the woodwork; you might have noticed a sagging in your shelves, or dust bunnies using the detritus of your drawers as lounge furniture. Suddenly, as we throw back the blinds and let the season’s light shine in – we might be more apt to notice all the clutter that was hibernating in our abode’s closets and corners.

While taking a page out of the room cleaning playbook of your youth might be tempting (find a storage space and stuff it in there), the grown up in you knows that’s not really going to cut it. Rather than looking at spring cleaning as an exercise in avoidance – it’s something that can be made easier and in some cases, financially beneficial, by thinking out of the box and changing your perspective. This spring, the Johnston Patch brings you five easy steps to a clutter-free season.

Step 1: Intervention inventory
This step requires a bit of a philosophical shift, and you might not be ready for it at first. The first step in your spring cleaning process should be taking an honest inventory and really asking yourself what’s important to you – not the you of five years ago, or five years from now (you know, the one who uses those Pilates DVDs on a regular basis). If having every Stephen King book ever written is really important to you, even though you know you’ll never re-read them, then you know you’re not ready to let that go. Comparing and contrasting your feelings about all those VHS tapes makes your priorities and the compromise clear: Stephen can stay, but those dinosaurs can go. You don’t have to adopt a scorched earth policy when sorting through your drawers and basements – but you should look at this as an opportunity to simplify your life, and really confront the root of your desire to accumulate stuff. You might just find that being faced with all of your impulse buys that you’ve hardly taken out of the box will serve you well in the future – you’ll think twice before spending your hard-earned cash on them.

Step 2: Organize!
Now that you’ve done much of the dirty work, this intermediary step is key to making sure that your newly sorted stuff doesn’t just stay in massive piles in new locations. Find a space – a spare room, your attic, the basement, the garage – where you can keep like items together in their appropriate groupings. Keep it simple: Stuff to throw away, stuff to sell, and stuff to donate. Immediately trash what needs to be thrown out. Remember to shred private or financial documents, recycle recyclables, and dispose of things like empty motor oil cans and half-hardened house paint in environmentally responsible ways. The Eco-Depot, part of Johnston's Resource Recovery center, can help you with this one!

Step 3: It’s easy being green (when you donate!)
You know the saying about another man’s trash. While it may be hard to accept that so many of your possessions, acid-washed jeans, and X-Men comic books have essentially become trash to you (or at least never-used dust magnets), as we discussed during the intervention, it’s a fact you’ll have to accept. Stopping your obsession over sunk costs and facing the music is all part of what happens in your donation pile – this is the stuff that’s in good condition, but you know you won’t be able to easily re-sell. Stop the shame spiral, and get thee to the thrift store. You’ll really take a load off – and receive tax acknowledgement notes at the same time.

The Salvation Army and Savers are great places to donate your gently used items – they accept everything from clothes to furniture. For large items, the Salvation Army can arrange a pickup if you call 1-800-SA-TRUCK. Similarly, the Habitat for Humanity ReStore puts your old stuff (even building materials!) to a lot of good use, and offers scheduled pickups as well. Supermarket chains such as often feature blue drop off bins for everything from clothes to books to shoes in their parking lots, for an easy drive by donation. And when you donate to your local library – you’re not just helping yourself make some much-needed shelf spare, you’re giving back to one of your community’s most important resources.

“We are always thrilled to receive donations,” said Grayce Moorehead, Assistant Director and Reference Librarian at the . Moorehead estimates that in the past, she has saved up to 20% of her book-buying budget through donations from patrons. Although the library doesn’t accept textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries or magazines, Moorehead said that all else is fair game. Books that cannot be used in the library’s collection are sold through the Friends of the Library book sales, which then use the funds to benefit the library’s programming and other resources.

Step 4: Sales, starting small
Craigslist, Half.com, Amazon, and eBay are great places to unload your used stuff while you wait for yard sale weather. Furniture, bulk lots of CDs/books, and certain home goods are your best bets for selling on Craigslist, whereas Half.com and Amazon are easy-to-use listing warehouses for your used books, CDs, DVDs and video games. eBay is for the savvier seller – and if you find that you have a lot of antique items that the eBay crowd is clamoring after, you may find it worth your while to visit a local antiques consignment houses, such as The Hope Chest in Johnston – where you’ll save on shipping and know you’re dealing with a reputable buyer.

Step 5: Hang some signs, it’s yard sale time
And here’s the final – and all-encompassing – step. Once you have a good weekend, and a good idea of what you’re selling, it’s time to move it all out to the curb. It’s amazing what you can unload in the span of one weekend. Anything left over at the end of the sale should go directly to the donation hotspots in Step 3; whatever you do, don’t bring any of that back in the house.