Spring Cleaning: Before a Move

Spring Cleaning is an essential part of your yearly routine, it allows you to refresh your home, get rid of the old to make room for all the new that came in over the winter holidays. It’s also a great way to make some extra cash, and begin the packing process if you are getting ready for a move. Even if you won’t be moving for another 3 to 6 months it is great to utilize spring cleaning as a time to begin packing away and minimizing your belongings.

We will be moving at the end of September so as a part of my Spring Cleaning, I have begun packing away my books and nick-nacks as they are not anything I will need as part of my essential daily tasks for the next few months. I suggest setting up at least 4 containers as you go through each room, while you clean.

As you begin Spring Cleaning and prepare for a move take the following steps.

Step 1: Make a list of rooms in your house/apartment. For example my list would look like this.

Living room

Dining room

Kitchen

Pantry

Bathroom #1

Bathroom #1’s linen closet

Coat closet

Baby’s room

Baby’s closet

Master bedroom

Master bedroom nook

Master bedroom closet

Bathroom #2

Bathroom #2 linen closet

Step 2: Pick a room either begin in the back of the house or front of the house, if you have multiple floors pick a floor.

Go through each room, break it down into walls, flat surfaces, and floors. For example the bathroom might be broken down as. Mirrors, counters, bathtubs, toilet, sink, floors.

Step 3: While you are organizing and wiping down surfaces, decide what you are going to donate, sell, trash, or pack away. If you have a while before your move only pack away non-essentials. For example if you are like me and own over 800+ books and have no intention of minimizing that number, it would be a good idea to begin packing away those books you are not currently reading and that you don’t refer to often. Put all trash in a trash bag.

Depending on how you are going to sell your items, i.e garage sale, craigslist, facebook group, or ebay consider each item carefully. If you are planning for a garage sale, put your donation stuff in there too, you never know what people might take an interest in. Whatever doesn’t sell at your garage sale you can then donate after.

Step #4: For things that you are planning to keep out, be sure to place them in their proper place. For example clothes and towels, should have a set place in the linen closet.

Step #5: Make sure you dust off any items you are packing away in boxes, otherwise you are just creating more work for yourself come moving day.

Step #6: Take your time. Utilize the Single Tasking method.

For more articles related to spring cleaning see below:

Kitchen Organization

Deep Cleaning Your Kitchen

Clean Out Your Computer Day

Surviving Life with a Baby Part 5: Chore Chart

Spring Cleaning: Tips and Tricks to a fresh Start of the Year

Do you have any suggestions for Spring Cleaning as you move? Let me know in the comments below.

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Single Tasking Day

Let’s face it we millennial’s have busy lives as of this year every millennial that was born in the 90s are adults. This means the majority of millennial’s now have bills to pay, and adult responsibilities to take care of. Growing up in the age of social networking, smart phones, and high tech laptops it is easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount that must/needs to get done.

Instead of trying to accomplish everything at once, give individual focus to each thing on your to do list at a time. I’ve discovered recently that by making a list of to do’s  and goals for the day and giving attention to each item individually I am able to accomplish everything on my list, sometimes I even managed to get more done then what I originally planned.

Cleaning used to really frustrate me, because I would think I had to do everything in a room at once. Since breaking down each of the rooms in my house into individual tasks and assigning certain tasks to certain days I find my home ten times cleaner, and staying clean longer. For example my kitchen is broken down into dishes, counter tops, floors, recycling,  trash and fridge. I could write an entire post on the way I’ve broken down each room into much smaller tasks.

For related posts see:

Kitchen Organization

Deep Cleaning Your Kitchen

Surviving Life with a Baby Part 5: Chore Chart

Spring Cleaning: Tips and Tricks to a fresh Start of the Year

In addition, to breaking down my cleaning tasks I have also broken down my work. I assign tasks for each day. I write down everything that needs to be done in the week. I then break down each of those into individual activities. I then take those activities and put them on the different days throughout the week. For example last week looked like this for me:

To do week of Feb. 13-19

Write blog posts for week Feb.20-26

Write Real Estate blog post for March (new client)

Work on e-book 4 hours

Create marketing posts on facebook

February 13-14

Focus on e-book

February 15-17

Focus on blog articles

February 18-19

Focus on facebook posts

Breakdown

Single Tasking Day

Live Streaming Craze

Job Hunting 101

Bouncing Back after illness

Kinnectpay post

Real Estate Post

2 hours with ebook

2hours with ebook

25 fb posts written

25 fb posts written

25 fb posts written

25 fb posts written

Since breaking my work down in this way I am able to accomplish a lot more every week. Sometimes more than I had planned for. By giving each activity its own attention I’m able to accomplish ten times more. Now that I have managed to get my chores and workload under control I’m planning to do something similar with the baby and making it a goal to complete 2-3 activities with him every day so I can make sure he is getting the attention he needs in order to grow.

How has giving your focus to one thing at a time helped you? Will you try to give your attention towards completing one activity at a time today? Let me know in the comments, I always love hearing my readers thoughts.

Hobbies: Reading List

So I’ve spent the last two years or so reading nothing but parenting books, pregnancy books, and How to Make Money Blogging articles. You can say I’m ready to start reading some more fun stuff. My husband even bought me an awesome book to help me get started. Harry Potter The Lost Child screen play. In case my review of the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them wasn’t enough of a hint I’m a big Harry Potter nerd. I also wrote a cool blog post about the Harry Potter Generation if you want to check that out. Since I have sort of put reading on the back burner I decided this year would be the perfect one to pick it back up. I have a pile of books that I had started reading prior to finding out I was pregnant and just never got back to. Here’s my reading list, hopefully I will get trough much more than just this list, but hey this is a good start.

Harry Potter: The Cursed Child (Completed)

Stephen King On Writing (Currently Reading)

How Successful People Think by John C. Maxwell ( I have actually read this book before, but am re-reading it as part of a project I’m working on.)

The Soul’s Code By James Hillman (I have also read this book in the past, but am re-reading it for the same project.)

Strengths Quest by Dr. Donald O. Clifton, Dr. Edward “Chip” Anderson, with Dr. Laurie A. Schreiner (I have never read this book, but I did take the seminar in college and really enjoyed it. I am reading this book as part of my project as well.)

What to Expect the Second Year (Okay I know this is a baby book, but I’m 180 pages away from finishing it so…shouldn’t I finish it?)

Debt Cures They Don’t want you  know about by Kevin Trudeau (I picked this book up just before getting pregnant I figure I should finish it, it does have “some” interesting insights.)

Black Blood by John Meaney ( I started reading this book again before I became pregnant I’m going to give it another chance and start from the beginning reading it.)

A Passion for Books by Terry W. Glaspey (It’s a rather short book that I’ve been meaning to read for quite some time its been sitting on my night stand so I figured why not?)

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them The Original Screenplay (I watched the movie might as well read the book too.)

Like I said I will probably be adding to this list later, but for now these are the books I hope to finish this year. I have been known to read multiple books at once so it is likely this will happen as well. I’m also considering re-reading Stephen Kings On Writing later this year and taking notes in order to help with my creative writing.