Spring Cleaning Your Home and Your Life
Spring is in the air.
The flowers are blooming, the birds have had chicks and tiny baby water dragons are scuttering out from the leafy garden around our back porch and peeking curiously through the windows, wondering what goodies might be inside.
I love this time of year.
After a chilly winter and yes, I know, I live in Queensland, Australia, so chilly is probably a slight exaggeration, everything seems to come alive again. I would much rather be hot and sweaty than cold any day of the year, so those first warmer days are always very welcome in our house.
The air seems fresher. I throw open the windows and let the breeze move through the house. You can hear the birds singing outside, the garden starts growing at an alarming rate again, and everything feels as though it has stretched, shaken off winter and started over.
And every year, without fail, something happens to me too.
I get the undeniable urge to spring clean the entire house.
Suddenly I want to go through cupboards, clear out drawers, wash things that probably haven't been washed since last spring and put pillows and blankets outside in the sunshine. There is nothing quite like the feel of sun-dried bed linen!
I start looking at all the things we've accumulated over the years and wondering why on earth we're still keeping half of them.
I even start making room in the cupboards for Christmas presents. I'm one of those people who starts keeping an eye out for gifts from the middle of the year so I can spread out the cost and avoid the December rush. I try my absolute best to stay away from shopping centres in December. I love the Christmas music and decorations, just preferably without several hundred other people enjoying them alongside me.
I also realised that maybe this urge to clear things out isn't only about having cleaner cupboards.
There's something about spring that reminds us how good it can feel to make space not just in our homes, but in our minds and our lives as well.
When our surroundings start to feel a little too full
There is something incredibly satisfying about clearing out a cupboard. You start with a shelf crammed with things, pull everything out, wonder how you could possibly own so many containers without lids, and end up feeling very pleased with yourself when you put back only the things you actually use.
It's such a small thing, really, and yet there is something about creating order in our physical surroundings that can make us feel a little calmer inside as well.
I know this is certainly true for me. When there is too much “stuff” around me, unfinished jobs sitting in my line of sight, piles accumulating on benches and cupboards so full that opening one becomes a minor game of chance, I start to feel scattered and distracted.
Not because I need everything to be perfectly ordered or arranged in some regimented, everything-in-its-exact-place kind of way, but because eventually I reach a point where it begins to feel as though everything is crowding in on me. For me, clutter becomes another form of noise, one more thing competing for my attention when my brain already has quite enough to think about.
That doesn't mean I aspire to live in one of those perfectly organised minimalist homes with three beige cushions, an artfully draped throw and a single vase positioned precisely in the centre of an otherwise empty table. That certainly isn't my house.
A home is meant to be lived in, and ours definitely looks as though people live here. Most days there’s pile of clean laundry on my couch that seems to expand and contract but never completely disappear. At least I know my teenage kids are clean. They seem capable of going through more clothes in a day than a supermodel on a photo shoot!
There’s a difference, though, between a home looking lived in and reaching that point where it simply starts to feel too full.
The funny thing is that it rarely happens all at once. We accumulate things gradually, often without even noticing. Something gets pushed into a cupboard because we might need it one day. Clothes we haven't worn for years remain hanging there because one day we might fit into them again. We keep things because they were expensive, because somebody gave them to us, because they remind us of another time in our lives, or simply because deciding what to do with them requires more effort than putting them back where they were.
And I think we can do exactly the same thing with our lives.
We accumulate responsibilities, unfinished tasks, expectations, worries, habits, commitments and all those little things we keep telling ourselves we'll eventually get around to doing, stopping or dealing with. Just like the things tucked away at the back of a cupboard, they can build up so gradually that we don't always notice how much we're carrying, until life begins to feel a little too full.
What if we asked a different question?
There’s a part of decluttering we don't talk about enough. We tend to focus on what we're getting rid of, the clothes going to the charity shop, the overflowing drawer finally being sorted, the commitments we're saying no to or the jobs we're finally crossing off the list. But perhaps, as we're deciding what to let go of, there's another question worth asking:
What are we making room for?
Because whenever we let something go, we create space. Clearing a cupboard creates physical space. Removing an unnecessary commitment from our calendar gives us back some time. Finally making a decision we've been going back and forth over can free up an extraordinary amount of mental energy. Even letting go of an expectation about who we think we should be, or what our life should look like by now, can create a little more emotional breathing room.
The interesting thing is that many of us aren't particularly comfortable leaving that space empty.
Sometimes we are so accustomed to filling every available space in our homes, our calendars and our minds that emptiness can almost feel like something that needs to be fixed.
But there's great value in having a little room around the edges of our lives. Space gives us time to think rather than constantly respond, to notice how we're actually feeling and to rest and reset. It gives us the opportunity to be a little more deliberate about what we allow back in, rather than simply filling the gap with the next thing that comes along.
And that's where the idea of spring renewal becomes more interesting. Making space isn't necessarily about creating room for more.
Instead, it can be about creating room for better.
More time outside, more conversations with people we care about, more creativity, more rest, more laughter, or simply more moments when nothing in particular needs to happen.
Sometimes we may not even know yet what we want that space for. We just know we need it.
And that's okay too.
We can create the space first and discover what wants to grow there later.
A gentle spring clean
So this spring, I'm going to embrace that familiar urge to throw open the windows, let the fresh air in and start pulling things out of cupboards. I'll no doubt fill a few bags for the charity shop, throw away things that should have disappeared years ago and rediscover several things I'd completely forgotten I owned.
And I think I'm going to try a slightly different kind of spring cleaning as well this season.
While I'm sorting through the physical clutter, I want to pay a little more attention to the clutter I can't see quite so easily. The unfinished jobs that keep popping into my head at inconvenient moments. The little decisions I've been postponing because I haven't quite known what to do with them. The commitments and habits that have quietly become part of my life but no longer fit the way I want to live.
I want to ask myself
Do I still need this?
Does this still matter to me?
Is this something I genuinely want to keep carrying with me?
And the most interesting question of all:
If I let this go, what might I make room for instead?
Maybe there are things we're ready to let go of. Maybe there are things we definitely want to keep. And maybe there are a few things we're not quite sure about yet that can stay on the shelf for a little longer.
I don't think we need to have immediate answers to all of these questions. Simply noticing what’s taking up our physical, mental and emotional space is enough to begin with.
We don't have to carry everything forward
One of the lovely things about watching the garden come back to life each spring is being reminded that nature is constantly changing.
Things grow. Things bloom. Things fall away.
And then something new appears.
The tiny water dragons currently darting through my garden weren't there a few weeks ago. The flowers blooming now weren't blooming in winter. The garden hasn't stayed exactly the same and simply added more and more on top.
There has been letting go as well as growing.
And our lives need a little of that too.
We don't have to carry every possession, commitment, expectation, worry, habit or version of ourselves into every new season.
We can put something down, clear a little space and rather than rushing to fill it, we can leave that space open for a while and see what emerges.
Perhaps that's one of the gifts of spring.
A reminder that we don't always need to know what comes next.
Sometimes we just need to make a little room for it.
Ready to make a little more room in your life?
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Want to go a little deeper?
In my book, Stop Rushing, Start Living, I explore how we can declutter more than just our physical surroundings. It's about looking at the habits, expectations, commitments and noise that can accumulate in our lives — and creating more space for the life we actually want to be living.
Written by Liz Anderson
Liz Anderson is a registered psychologist and author with almost 30 years' experience helping people navigate stress, overwhelm, life changes and the everyday challenges of being human.
Through Slow Down with Liz, she shares practical psychology, gentle reflections and simple ways to slow down, reconnect with yourself and create a life with a little more breathing room.
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