Your Spring Cleaning To-Do List

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BONUS FREEBIE: Want even more ways to stay organized, productive and less stressed? Click here to get access to my List-Making Starter Kit. It will boost your efficiency and get you back to doing more of the things you love.

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It’s officially Spring! And that means…?

It’s time for spring cleaning.

For many of us, our minds immediately jump to buckets of cleaning products and scrubbing our floors. Which is a great way to start. But there’s tons of ways to clean, organize, and de-clutter in honor of the new season.?

Here’s a checklist of ways to get you fully organized and ready for spring.

1) De-clutter Your Inbox.

Starting today, instead of deleting the sales and spam emails cluttering your inbox as soon as you see them, take the extra time today to open each one.??

I do this from my desktop so I can really figure out if I need to get these on a daily basis. If I don’t, I unsubscribe. ?What a dirty little word!? But I do unsubscribe and so should you!

There’s just too much to sort through to figure out what’s most important on any give day. It hurts my overall productivity! Deleting each email every day wastes time when more pressing mail awaits.

If you’re overwhelmed, you should do the same. It will be liberating!

2) Clean out Your Closets.

I’ve written before about Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.

Marie says everything you own wants to be of use to you. Isn’t that such a nice way of thinking about it? That was a huge mindset switch for me.

Marie suggests: Ask yourself why have it? Reassess its role in your life.

For the items that don’t fit, you thought you’d like, or don’t use say, “thank you for teaching me what doesn’t suit me.” And let it go. (If something doesn’t spark joy but is necessary, keep it until it’s done serving a purpose.)

I’ve used this method and had great success. You can use it to clean out your closet, your office, and every room in your house! And if you’re looking for more closet-specific guidance, check out my chat with stylist and wardrobe consultant Monisha Kapur.

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3) Reorganize Your Home Office.

As we’ve all learned throughout the pandemic, it’s so easy for your desk or your home office to get messy. Especially if you don’t have a ton of space.??

Thankfully, I’ve got a step-by-step system to set yourself up for success!?

To get started, join the over 500,000 learners that have taken my LinkedIn Learning Course “Organizing Your Remote Office for Maximum Productivity”.

And once your office is organized…

4) Clean Your Desktop.

It may seem simple but clearing clutter will do a world of difference for your stress levels. I can’t believe how long I let my desktop stay littered with photos, documents and even shortcuts that I never used.?

1. Create categorized folders like ‘photos’ and ‘documents’.
2. Move all the picture files into the photos folder, etc.
3. Look at the remaining files and ask, do I really need this? If you haven’t looked at it in over a year the answer is probably no.
4. If you still have files leftover, put them in an ‘Odds and Ends’ folder.

Revisit this practice every 3 or 4 months to keep your desktop clean.

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5) Clear Out Your Schedule.

Some things sneak onto your to-do lists that make you unproductive, unhappy, and stressed. So what do you want to spend your time on this season?

Identifying where you’d most like to be spending your time and learning how to track your time consistently is difficult, but important. If you’re not sure where to start, my LinkedIn Learning course “How to Set Boundaries and Protect Your Time” can help you get started.

Developing a strategy to set clear boundaries and stick to rules to get back your time and create a happier, more productive work and personal life.

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6) Streamline Your Social.

It seems like a daunting task to go through the TONS of files, folders, and alerts that have been clogging up your computer, your computer will thank you for the fresh start!

A great place to start is by unfollowing, unfriending, and untweeping.?

Go through Facebook and Instagram and unfriend/unfollow people you don’t interact with or who’s feed doesn’t inspire you. There’s no reason to keep people you may not even know on your friend list. Or old acquaintances who you’re sick of seeing status updates from that skim over anyway! You’ll be less likely to miss out on what you want to see in your feed, if you don’t have to scroll through things you’re not interested in.

Facebook and Instagram you have to do manually, but Untweep will help you clear your Twitter feed automatically. This will go through and pick out accounts that haven’t tweeted in x amount of days (you decide, can be 1 day of not tweeting or a whole month) and unfollow them for you. This is a great way to clean out your account, that doesn’t take up too much of your time!

Happy Cleaning Season!

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BONUS FREEBIE: Want even more ways to stay organized, productive and less stressed? Click here to get access to my List-Making Starter Kit. It will boost your efficiency and get you back to doing more of the things you love.

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