9 Ways To Spring Clean Your LIFE

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It’s spring! Hooray! (I say that now, but watch as it snows in Minnesota next week.) Either way, spring IS approaching, which means you need to get a jump start on spring cleaning. I’m not saying you need to scrub your home from top to bottom. You can do that, and you should, but you can spring clean your actual LIFE, too. And I looooooove cleaning, so let’s do this shit.

1. Attack your worst enemy – your inbox. If you’re like me, you’ve somehow amassed a collection of promo emails and don’t remember signing up for a lot of them. Unsubscribe. I like the Unroll.me site for this; you can unsubscribe so easily and get that inbox back to more manageable size quickly. Please don’t be that person with 1600 unread emails. That’s so stressful for me to see on your phone.

2. Pause your social media notifications. You don’t need to know every time someone likes one of your photos. You don’t need to know every single time you’re mentioned in a tweet. Pause these and it’ll be easier to get focused.

3. Go through your closet. Have any sweaters with holes? Jeans that need hemming? A pair of shoes that needs re-soling? Take them in and have them fixed. If you’ve got warm-weather clothes that need some love, have them dry-cleaned. (Ideally, you do this before you store them for winter, but I won’t blame you if you don’t.) Spend the money and get them fixed so they’re not taking up space, and if you won’t do that – throw them away or donate them NOW.

4. Do the cleaning jobs you hate the most first. Hate scrubbing the bathtub? Get it out of the way first. Spray it down, let it sit and then attack. Or, do what I do and get chores done by doing them in short increments; reason with yourself. Say, “I’ll wash the floors for ten minutes, and then I can go do something fun.”

5. Clear out your brain. Make a pact to yourself, and promise to spend anywhere from five to 15 minutes just chilling with your thoughts. Leave your phone on silent in another room, or download a meditation app and turn your phone to Airplane mode so you’re not distracted. We’re so busy staring at screens that we need to remind ourselves to refocus. Take a walk minus technology. Hang out with a friend and say whoever reaches for their phone first has to pay for drinks or dinner.

6. Spring clean the people around you. Do you have a friend or acquaintance who isn’t making you happy anymore? Maybe it’s a significant other or a hookup buddy. Say goodbye. Don’t waste your time with people who suck the fun out of your life.

7. CLEAN YOUR CAR. After winter, your car is probably disgusting. Salt-stained floor mats, lots of dirt and salt on the body … take it in for a thorough wash. Spring for the interior cleaning, too. Then, go home and throw all the crap you accumulate in your back seat and trunk away. If you’re like me, you end up with six pairs of shoes and a One Direction poster living in your car for months.

8. Clean up your finances, too. Re-examine where you’re spending money and where you could cut some to save. Have a Birchbox subscription that you never use? Cancel it. Do you use your Netflix AND Hulu Plus? Do you spend $30 every time you go to happy hour? See where you can cut corners and save a little more.

9. Attack the little spaces junk tends to accumulate. This means your desk, the spot you throw your mail, your purse and your junk drawer. Oh, and probably your bathroom cabinets. Throw things away, and recycle that junk mail! The bright side to this painful job is that you might find things you’ve been looking for, or discover that you have a second iPhone charger you never knew about!