It’s that time of year. Spring is in the air and that means it is time for cleaning, decluttering and organizing. (Why is there no Winter cleaning?)
When asked, most friends say Spring cleaning starts with their closets, giving away clothes that haven’t been worn or that no long fit. Somehow a clean closet means a more organized life.
In New England, of course it means the transition from winter clothes to spring and summer clothes. Some might say it is replacing black winter clothes for black summer clothes. (When did black become our everything?)
And what about Spring. Are there really spring clothes? Short sleeve tee shirts are only a little useful in April. Like in the fall, we hold on to some semi-warm stuff so the closet feels too full and we have no idea what to wear. July it is clear what to wear, but April not so much. Then there is a final clean-out around Memorial Day when the wooly turtlenecks are finally put away.
Lucy wonders if there is really logic to this closet organizing. In the midst of this task when the bed is piled with clothes about 4 hours in, she sinks into total despair, because she realizes she can’t turn back so she has to finish this uninspiring project.
For us, the best part of Spring is giving up socks. We actually love socks in principal but doesn’t it feel great to slip bare feet into ballet flats. Makes you want to skip.
What about “things” in the mud room ,kitchen and garage? Do we really need to purge the spice racks, flip the mattresses, clean the windows, set the timer for the oven cleaner so that stink overtakes the house, take piles of coats to the cleaner and then, on purpose, forget to pick them up until November. Does anyone wash the white goo off their winter boots before putting them away?
Tackle one area at a time is what the super paid organizer consultants say. Set up giveaway and throw away boxes. One trick we have learned is never allow the stuff to be “stored” in the trunk of the car. Been there, done that, so we recommend that you make a plan for the next day to go to a thrift shop or the trash.
It is tough because a professional organizer says that we need to declutter by getting rid of things that have meaning for us. For example, there are silly things like sea shells we collected on the beach in Florida, or a drawer of small left over wrapping paper or broken pottery made by our children. And there is a small chest in the laundry room that has stuff, nailfiles, leftover creams, a few cotton balls, a magnifying glass, a few allergy pills, etc. But then we have to wonder if we clean everything out of this chest, then what is it for? Should we get rid of the entire chest?
And what about the ten quilted coats in the laundry room? Why do we have ten coats? And what about the drawer with various masks leftover from our years of Covid? And what about that adorable baby sweater that we actually knitted or stopped half way through deciding that knitting was not our thing?
And this doesn’t begin to look at the clutter in the file drawers in our office. Talk about memory lane, there are files of things long past. There are files on projects that never came to fruition. There are tons of slides in one drawer, and there are shoe boxes of photographs and negatives (remember those?). We can begin to see why the idea of cleaning and decluttering is so overwhelming.
So maybe consider this, just maybe we are supposed to live with a lot of stuff. Maybe it protects us from feeling that our lives are so organized that there are no hidden memories. Kind of like the lines on our face, some of the “treasures” we have collected are a reflection of a life well lived.
The good news is that in about 150 days, we will be doing the same thing all over again but apparently since there is no Winter cleaning, all we have to do is to take those cozy boots out of the box and hope that we remembered to scrap off the white goo.
Since it is truly Spring, we are heading to the garden to plant pansies and get ready for the joy of summer flowers! The spice rack and old stuff in the refrigerator will have to wait.
Ciao
Lucy and Claudia