{"id":1813,"date":"2025-03-11T11:48:22","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T16:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/livingyourbestlife60plus.com\/blog\/?p=1813"},"modified":"2025-03-11T16:20:40","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T21:20:40","slug":"time-for-spring-cleaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/livingyourbestlife60plus.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/11\/time-for-spring-cleaning\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for Spring Cleaning?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Spring Cleaning? Company’s Coming? Lost something you know you have? Whatever the motivation, there are times we just have to go through the clutter, reorganize, and throw out what isn’t needed. With the new birth of Spring growing around us, it seems like the perfect time to freshen up our homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last August, we featured a post from Nancy Anderson titled My Year of Saying Yes<\/a>. The gist of it was that with \u201ca spirit of adventure,\u201d before her 70th<\/sup> birthday, Nancy is going to do 70 new things throughout this year\u2014despite being \u201ca lifelong bystander.\u201d Regardless her age, she wanted to grow and stretch. Number 32 on her list is \u201cclearing out clutter.\u201d On Facebook, on March 5, 2025, she posted<\/a>: \u201cIt was hard. I had to force myself to do it. But you know what? It freed me from the chaos of clutter and simplified my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by Nancy\u2019s clearing out clutter, I decided it was time to tackle my messes. I keep a neat and tidy house. One of the ways I do it, is everything that doesn\u2019t have a place or needs attention gets moved to my closet, bedroom, or office. The net result is I have piles and gatherings of things that I need to sort through or put away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early this year, I did lots of traveling\u2014which meant less time at home. Combined with activities, work, and family, this left these areas of the house sorely neglected. It was time to get on top of the messy corners, counters, and floors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Before<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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After<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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All pretty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I started in my closet where I still had some Christmas gifts to put away and unpacking to do. I moved it all out to my bathroom so I could see what needed to be dealt with, and how. I moved the empty trash can from the garage to right outside my door and began. By the time I finished, it was 2\/3 full. I also had a \u201cgive away\u201d box. Because my closet is off my bathroom, I moved all the clutter out of the closet into my bathroom. This meant that if I wanted to take a shower, I had another mess to clean up. Ultimately, I moved the \u201ckeep\u201d items onto the bed and that became my next project. Now, even that is cleaned up!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bathroom with all of the clutter I moved from the closet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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After<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Like the Cat in the Hat, cleaning up one thing, often creates a new cleaning project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I still had three suitcases partially unpacked from February. Clothes and mail got placed on top! Now that, too, is clean and I can walk into my office. Which leads to the final area I need to deal with. Yet to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I have already moved three boxes full of tax files dating back to 2018 out of my office. This is what is left for me to deal with. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Like Nancy said, \u201cI had to force myself to do it.\u201d But now that it is done, I too, feel proud of my accomplishments\u2014which is why I am sharing it with you here. I hope that like I was inspired by Nancy; you\u2019ll be motivated by my efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 How do we amass so many things and why do we keep things we don\u2019t need, that don\u2019t fit, or we don\u2019t use? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While my house is clean, don\u2019t look in my drawers or cupboards!! They are often stuffed and cluttered. Perhaps that is a symbol of our lives. While we may look great and all put together on the outside, don\u2019t look inside. You might see the turmoil and angst we are dealing with. The emotional element of deep cleaning often prevents us from doing the physical work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nancy concluded her recent post with this: \u201cI had to let go of things that had potential and keep only what was practical. \u2026 Is there an area in your home that could use a little decluttering? Medicine cabinet, shoe shelf, food pantry, coat closet? Just start with one drawer or shelf\u2014the satisfaction is contagious!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What ideas do you have to make decluttering practical and fun? You may even find the physical cleaning helps with the emotional clutter. Let\u2019s make this contagious!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lauren Littauer Briggs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Through her speaking and writing, Lauren<\/a> encourages people with her heartfelt messages and practical presentations. She is the author of The Art of Helping<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 What to say and Do When Someone is Hurting. <\/em>Lauren and her family are active in both church and community choral groups. She lives in Redlands, CA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While my house is clean, don\u2019t look in my drawers or cupboards!! They are often stuffed and cluttered. Perhaps that is a symbol of our lives. While we may look great and all put together, don\u2019t look inside. You might see the turmoil and angst we are dealing with. The emotional element of deep cleaning often prevents us from doing the physical work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7,15],"tags":[276],"class_list":["post-1813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-wellness","category-house-decor","category-soul","tag-spring-cleaning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/livingyourbestlife60plus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/livingyourbestlife60plus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/livingyourbestlife60plus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/livingyourbestlife60plus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/livingyourbestlife60plus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1813"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/livingyourbestlife60plus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1837,"href":"https:\/\/livingyourbestlife60plus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1813\/revisions\/1837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/livingyourbestlife60plus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/livingyourbestlife60plus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/livingyourbestlife60plus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/livingyourbestlife60plus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}