Spring cleaning season is almost here! Can you feel it in the air? Can you tell from the pictures that are popping up in your Pinterest feed? Everyone’s aaall about getting their act together, getting organized, and cleaning their homes from top to bottom to clear out all the staleness of winter and get ready for all the fun of summer.
Sounds kind of exciting right? Except then you realize that you somehow need to find the time to actually do all that cleaning. 🙂
So let me introduce you to The Cleaning Ninja method of spring cleaning! I’m all about working smarter, not harder, when it comes to cleaning around the house and these few tips will make sure you’re approaching your spring cleaning this year in the same way.
Don’t
So first of all, when it comes to spring cleaning, I have one word for you. Don’t. Well, technically that’s two words in a contraction, but you know what I mean. 🙂 Don’t spring clean. Just keep your home at that lovely level of cleanliness all the time. Get there gradually and then stay there. If you’ve read my book The Cleaning Ninja, then you saw how I gave you a bunch of itty bitty steps and tips that were really easily accomplishable on any old day, but that added up together, equaled one sparkling clean house. Spring cleaning is when you clean your house really really well, painfully and tediously, to the point of exhaustion only once a year and then let it slowly slide back into disaster mode throughout the rest of the year. If you’re the one that cleaned your fingers to the bone, that’s more than a little disheartening to watch happen over time, and it’s even more disheartening when you realize that you just don’t have the time to get it back to that level of cleanliness more than once a year. Who wants to live like that?
It’s a Lifestyle
Oh wow, does that ever sound like a horrible cliche that can be applied to every new fad diet ever, but it really is true. Keeping your home spring-clean everyday is really a lifestyle. It’s about keeping up with the basics in a really simplified, streamlined way everyday and then adding in one or two tiny little pieces of the rest of the cleaning puzzle everyday, not just once a year. So when that once a year cleaning time rolls around, you’ve already done everything on your list and you hardly even noticed it! With traditional spring cleaning, you clean like a maniac for a few days or maybe a week or two and then you’re done. When you’re working smarter, you’re a Cleaning Ninja everyday of your life. It’s part of your routines and who you are, and it eventually just comes naturally!
Honestly, anyone can set out their own cleaning plan based on these principles and turn themselves into a Cleaning Ninja. It’s all about doing the basic necessities everyday (Yes. Every. Day.) and then adding on one or two super mini tasks that eventually create the kind of clean home you want without you really noticing that you did it. I do really believe that anyone can figure this out, on their own, with their own brain and willpower if they really want to. I also know that during those times that your willpower isn’t quite as strong, it’s super helpful to have a positive outside influence to motivate, encourage, and teach you to help you re-align your goals and thought processes. A lot of top productivity, motivation, and entrepreneurial experts recommend “consuming content” that’s in line with what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s like a constant refresher for your willpower, rather than just trying to magically keep yourself motivated. And you know what? It doesn’t just work for when you’re trying to make a million dollars, it really helps with keeping your home clean too!
In The Cleaning Ninja, I give you a whole bunch of little time-saving tips and tricks around the house to help give you a little boost of efficiency, motivation, and energy to set you on the right path. I’ve also included a few checklists that show you what you should be doing daily, and also what kinds of little extra tasks I do each day to help put together all the pieces of the clean home puzzle, a tiny little bit at a time. You can use these tips, suggestions, and checklists exactly as they’re suggested in the book, or you can use the book to just supplement your own cleaning plan and give yourself a little extra motivational boost if you just need a reminder about how much you really want a clean and peaceful environment for your family to live in.
I know a lot of you are probably looking at spring cleaning season coming up just ahead and dreading it a little bit, so I thought it would be fun to give away a few copies of my book today. Definitely use this book as your free pass out of spring cleaning this year, and instead start adding in a few new easy habits everyday that will make you feel like you’re cleaning your home at warp speed with energy leftover to spare! Of course, if you don’t want to take your chances, you can just pop on over to Amazon where the book is available to purchase in paper back and in the kindle version.
If you’d like to enter the book giveaway, just leave a comment below telling me what your biggest cleaning challenge is this spring! I’ll be giving away 5 copies of my book!
Giveaway is open to residents of the US and Canada 18 years of age or older. Giveaway closes on March 24 at 11:59pm EST. Please use the hashtag #freegiveaway in your comment to enter this giveaway!
Good luck and happy cleaning!
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.