Spring Cleaning!

It's Spring, and thoughts turn to Spring Cleaning.

You know, now that I'm thinking about it, I really did do that one year.  I took five whole vacation days off (I had fifteen a year back in those heady days) and cleaned everything from stem to stern.  I have to admit, it was bliss.

The next year, I took the days off to do it and slept for five days straight.

So it's a mixed bag, really.

If I had to distill everything I've learned about cleaning, organizing, developing new habits and pruning old ones, and maintaining stuff I'd say this:

I need a maid!

Ha!  Until I am in a financial place to afford one, here's what I do that works for me:

1. Start small.  Baby steps really do work - AND tend to get done when big giant leaps get procrastinated.
2. Avoid it.  If you don't make a mess to begin with, you don't have to clean it up.  Cultivate tidiness.
3. Learn how to manage the everyday accumulation of things.  If you're a knitter (and who isn't??), learn how to keep your projects and stash in self-contained areas so that they aren't all over the house for the cats to massacre.
4. Hire a maid.  No, really.  Call around and see how much it costs.  It's less than you think, and starting from a clean house makes it a helluva lot easier to want to maintain it.
5. Be reasonable.  If you work outside the home or are a homemaker, and you want to write in addition to that, and you expect to eat, sleep, and occasionally have some fun, your home isn't going to look like a spread from Architectural Digest.  That's just facts.  Get used to what level of clutter you can live with and tell your inner Aunt Mabel the Magnificent to catch a train to Biloxi and leave you alone.

What about you?  What works for your tidy space?

--
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
- E.E. Cummings

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