You know the drill. Months of cabin fever unleash into a firestorm of cleaning fury. From organizing the garage to removing the last of the dust on the chandelier, we prepare our homes for the inevitable chirping of birds and brilliant sunlight the cuts through the verdant bushes on the front lawn.
This year, spring cleaning is the last thing on the mind of many Americans, as we continue to dig out of storm after winter storm that has assaulted virtually every part of the United States. It’s difficult to plan spring cleaning, when six feet of snow blocks the front doorway. However, tough times bring out the best in people, which means maybe there is something you can do that involves spring-cleaning.
Now is a good time to spring clean your life.
What Does it Mean to Spring Clean Your Life?
Spring-cleaning the home requires a certain amount of physical exertion. When you spring clean your life, you make several decisions that have strong emotional implications. Just because you are not sweating from physical exertion does not mean that spring-cleaning your life is easy.
Let’s look at eight ways to spring clean your life.
Polish Your Relationships
Spring-the season of rebirth-is an excellent time to extricate ourselves from relationships that have long worn out their welcome. Despite the social media trend that equates popularity with Facebook likes, spring cleaning your relationships requires you to seek quality relationships. Closely examine all of the relationships you have forged in your life, and decide which ones to discard and which ones require a little more polish to shine brightly. Spring is a good time to reinvigorate relationships that may have stagnated.
Clear Your Mind
Winter can prompt acute emotional distress caused by sitting in the same home for three or more months. This winter has been especially brutal and we had more than three months to wait out melting snow and frigid temperatures. The best way to spring clean your life after a tough winter involves clearing your mind. Lose negative emotions such as anger and envy by practicing the most fundamental mindfulness meditations. By routinely sitting alone in a quiet area-preferably outdoors-you begin to clear the mental attic of its ill feelings. Yoga also works as a way to clear the mind and spring clean your life.
Related: Spring clean your desk
Organize Your Finances
One of the most important ways to spring clean your life is to organize your finances. From balancing the checkbook to planning investments, you prevent financial ignorance from cluttering up your mind. Create monthly budgets, set long-term purchase goals, and put a few more bucks monthly into the retirement portfolio to achieve an important component of spring-cleaning your life. Spring represents the prime season for eschewing unnecessary expenses that help you get through the winter blues.
Downsize Your Schedule
Many of us judge each other and ourselves by how busy we are with work and personal activities. However, most of us zip through the winter months taking on more activities to lessen the blow of winter’s powerful punch. When spring arrives, the time has come to downsize your schedule. The goal is to give more time to yourself, whether you make it a routine to take the bicycle through the city trails or spend time among nature in a local preserve. Analyze how you spent your time over the past few months and make the change to eliminate busyness from your schedule.
Put a Shine on Your Talents
The season of rebirth acts as an excellent time of year for you to rediscover talents that you have allowed to go dormant for years. Spring clean your life by reintroducing yourself to something that motivated you to pursue in the past, whether that involves breaking out the dusty saxophone or awkward golf swing. The goal is to add more fun into a life mostly dominated by family and professional obligations. Spring clean you life means many things to many people, but the common denominator is making sure you take care of you.
Enhance Your Diet
It seems counterintuitive to make diet changes during the coldest months of the year. After all, we need to stock up on fat to ward off Old Man Winter. When spring knocks on your front door with its light breezes and sweet fragrances, then it’s time to enhance what you consume. We tend to stick to diets that include the same ingredients, which means many of us lack certain nutrients. Create a weekly menu that varies in ingredients and watch your interest in developing your cooking skills grow. The season of renewal can also renew your body.
Spring Clean Your Life by Exercising
When winter’s tight grasps finally lessens, think about how you plan to incorporate exercise into your life. Exercise bolsters the immune system, as well as strengthens bones and muscles. An exercise regimen expels the body’s toxins that accumulated over the course of three months by eating unhealthy holiday foods. Above all, exercise cleans out the mental closest by stimulating the neurotransmitters that typically go dormant, or at least slow down, during the winter. You can simply adhere to a daily walking regimen or join a fitness center to spring clean your life.
Remove Clutter
When it comes time to perform physical spring-cleaning, make the removal of clutter the first to do thing on your spring cleaning list. When you reduce the amount of clutter inside of your home, you give yourself a significant mental boost. Donate clothes, appliances, and other household items to charity and give yourself a less enclosed feeling. Removing clutter helps you spring clean your life both mentally and physically.
Winter cannot stay with us forever. Eventually, the frigid temperatures and mountain of snow will give way to the beginning of rebirth. That rebirth comes in the form of cleaning out your home, as well as dusting off the cobwebs in your mind. To spring clean your life and home, consider bringing plants and flowers into the home. Scented candles go a long way towards enhancing your mental state. Take advantage of the most popular season to make changes by taking the right steps to spring clean your life. We know that spring-cleaning your home removes allergy causing dust particles. Now we know that spring cleaning your life removes the mental barriers that prevent us from realizing our full potential.
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