Spring Cleaning Early intro

Wahoo it is a new year! I have all the Christmas decor put away and everything cleaned up a bit. My living room is so empty that I feel like we are about to move! haha 
As you can tell my thoughts are all over the place...this is nothing new!

It is that time of year for a fresh start in all aspects of life. For the holidays (starting in October at the latest) I take down almost all of my shelf decorations and many pictures. I decorate for Halloween then fall/ Thanksgiving and then Christmas. 

Normally at this point in the year I will start putting up my ordinary home decorations. This year I think I am going to do spring cleaning early... My thoughts that led me to this started because I was mentally planning out my year (at least to the end of the school year thinking of all that needed to be done before summer). My first thoughts were about spring (of course because I am ready to start deep cleaning my house, I thought when would be a good time to start?) Starting in March I am feeling pretty cooped up, it is still cold here, sometimes the snow has melted but if it isn't snowing in March it is raining. At this point no amount of cleaning has ever made me feel settled so I start planning things to change in my home. I start rearranging furniture, maybe flip flop the kids bedrooms or change the themes in them, and then I go to talking about changing the wall colors...at this point my husband says I have cabin fever and I need to chill out. Haha I have yet to change a wall color. Instead I start focusing on what needs to be done outside, we grow a garden and I start everything from seed. Because of our short growing season I start planting them inside at the end of Feb, some in March and some in April taking care of them until they can go out in June. Since we are still working on our yard, in March I plan out the spring projects that need to be done before it gets hot and of course I finally put away snow things. Then in April and May it is finally nice enough to start working outside. Once I am working in the yard I do not want to go back inside to be cooped up doing spring cleaning when I can be out!

After thinking about how busy my spring is, I thought about my January and February. We have 3 birthdays in these months so that is a bit busy but besides that nothing! Except for that little project we decided to start 1 month ago (ya know to finish our basement because winter is our slowest season of the year, ha.) That’s fine…it’s fine…everything will be fine! LOL

Watch this video to see my final decision (in case you haven’t guessed already) and the rest of my plan.

There you have it I will be doing my “Spring Cleaning” and any minor home improvement projects during the first 2 months of the year. I am adding minor home projects because off the top of my head I know I need to do some touch up painting in places, and as I deep clean each room I am sure there will be little things that I find along the way that will also be easy to fix.

You also heard me right, I want you to join me!! To help us all out, I have designed free printable check lists!

Don't you just love lists? They help me so much to keep me focused and moving on to the next task. I also just love to check things that are done off, it is so rewarding to say I don't have to think about that again!

I have made 2 lists 'Getting the Nitty Gritty'  and ‘Cleaning the Surface’ for you to download and print them off for yourself! ‘Getting the Nitty Gritty’ is a very in depth and through cleaning check list to help you make sure you get every nook and cranny in your home! ‘Cleaning the Surface’ is a very basic list for any one that wants to clean every area of their home, but maybe not every inch haha.

I have included notes at the end of every room/area for you to write things that you need to change or fix in that space. Like if light bulbs are out, if there is a hole in the wall, or even I want to update that light fixture soon. You can immediately write it down and fix it when you can instead of forgetting about it as you finish cleaning. Or what I often do is stop what I am doing fix or do the little project and then never get back to the deep cleaning because that one thing of course took longer than I anticipated!

Anyways, you will also notice little asterisks * by some things. These tasks have extra notes, tips, or clarifications about them that I have made in each blog post about that area.

Please help me stay accountable and follow along. I would love you to tag me with your progress too @_countrysparkles_ and #springcleaningdoneearly on Instagram in stories or posts, then we can all celebrate our progress together!! It can be a big task, but chopped up into smaller pieces it will be a whole bunch of little accomplishments that lead to the big win of a clean home!!

There are 27 different areas that I have made check lists for. You may not have all the rooms in your home and that is ok, that just means you get a free day!!! Some areas will be really quick, like the mechanical room which will probably take me 15 mins. Other areas are going to be a full day of work, like the kitchen, you may even need 2 days, and that is ok! There will be a mix of both. I am going to put out a blog post for each area that you can refer back to and I will save all my cleaning stories for that day on Instagram in the highlight bubbles so if you get behind no biggie you won’t miss any of my tips along the way.

I probably won’t go in order of the cleaning lists either. I am going to try but if I have a super busy day then I am going to do an easy room on that day because ya know LIFE happens and even a stay at home mom can’t drop everything for a month to just clean all day every day. But I will try to give you a heads up the day before on which area I am planning to do next.

I don’t want spring cleaning to kick my butt or yours. Sure we could do all this in 1 week and bust it out, but we will be exhausted especially if you are doing the nitty gritty check list. Go for it if you want to though! My plan is to take it slow and in reasonable chunks by cleaning 1 area a day. Yep this means it will take 24 days (I am going to do bedroom closets and the rooms at the same time, except the master, otherwise it will be too much chaos for my kids.) I didn’t even know I had that many different areas until I counted them right at this moment. After finding that out I will admit I am a little intimidated, but I know my mind will thank me afterwards knowing things like the vent in my sons nursery isn’t caked with dust any more. And when summer comes I won’t be thinking the whole time while I am out playing with my family that I should be inside cleaning under the fridge.

 After we get going since it will be in small chunks it really won’t be that bad. Besides, how do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time!!

I am going to start on Monday January 13^th with the kitchen, yep get the biggest one out of the way first, everything else is easy from there. I will NOT be spring cleaning on Saturdays and Sundays I reserve those days for fun, family, the Lord, and rest.

I hope you join me for this cleaning adventure! I am excited to take control of 2020 and start off this year with a clean home where my family and friends can enjoy time and make memories together for the decade to come.

Happy cleaning!