Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”
It’s that time of year! Spring cleaning! Time to open up our windows, air our the stale air and dust that’s been kept inside from the cold, and refresh our spaces. Why is this such an important part of our life as we change from a colder season to a warmer or should be? It’s because Spring is the symbol of renewal and beginning. This is when the snow melts, everything blooms, and we have special holidays like Easter and Mother’s Day to celebrate the rebirth and root of our birth. So, what am I doing for my spring clean? Read on and find out.
While my body does sometimes has a hard time adjusting from the winter to the spring weather and I oftentimes get some kind of sickness during this transitional time, I also take advantage of it as well. When it’s cool, I’ll stay inside and maybe relax or do some small cleaning around the house. But when it’s nice and sunny and the weather is just the right temperature, I throw open the curtains, open the windows a bit and let the air circulate.
Sometimes when I have a big cleaning or dusting day, and the weather is nice, I take advantage of that and the energy of the sun and the air to keep me going. I don’t overdo it, but just enough to get the job I need to get done for the day. In fact, one time I heard from our local Detroit Channel 4 station is that when you are doing a spring clean, don’t do everything at once. Take at least one section or one area a day and focus on that. Then you won’t be as tired or worn out.
In addition, experts also say that spring cleaning is great for your mental health. You are unloading old things and frankly the “baggage” that doesn’t belong to you anymore. In addition, when you do clean something and you finish it, you get a great sense of feeling you’ve accomplished something. I also see cleaning in general as a form of exercise. We are stretching our arms to get the dusty ceiling fans and hard to reach places, using our muscles to push and pull a vacuum, etc. I think if we think of any kind of cleaning in this way, then we might not be scared about exercise either.
As for me, I’ve already started my spring cleaning for the month and making this month the time to do so. One day, I made it a vacuum day. The next section was organizing my art closet a bit. Just recently, I had help rearranging my living room because I felt like it was time to re-shift the energies and now I have a little chill out corner and a lil workspace area. I’ve even gone through my closet to sift through things I don’t need anymore and put them in a bag for a donation drop. Of course, in between those days, I do take a day or two to rest depending on how I’m feeling or how busy I am with other things in my life.
As a lot of us are getting close to tax time, getting our finances in order and making sure we have the right information to work with a website or our local CPA is also part of the spring clean. Because we are reorganizing and getting rid of those reports we don’t need to keep and those that we do. And the ones we get rid of go right into the shredder so no one can steal our information. Maybe you haven’t thought about it like that before, but when you take a step back and think about it, it totally makes sense.
To be honest, there really is no one way to do a spring cleaning. It’s all about what you want to take care of, clean out and reorganize in your life. It’s about your goals and want to focus on. Spring cleaning is like starting up a New Year because of all the new beginnings. Throw out the old and unused and welcome in the new.
Good luck on your cleaning efforts and remember to pace yourself.
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