Spring Cleaning for the Easily Overwhelmed

Spring cleaning and I don't get along too well.

Don't get me wrong, I'm ready to get rid of the germs, dust, and cobwebs just as much as anyone else, but I get overwhelmed way too easily.  I march into a room ready to attack it full force, but before five minutes have passed I'm already ready to give up.

I want to empty every drawer, scrub it out, then re-organize it.  But before I can do that I have to try on clothes to determine what still fits and what I need to get rid of.  "Oh, goodness.  Is that a hole in that shirt?  I need to get that mended."  
 Before I know it I'm sitting in the middle of a room full of empty drawers, piles of clothing, cleaning supplies, and now mending supplies.  I have a mess bigger than before I started, and I'm getting nowhere fast.

That is a rather drastic example, but honestly, I do have a really hard time not getting overwhelmed.  I want to do everything, and I want to do it all at the same time.  That approach gets me into a lot of trouble.

This year will be different.  My Anti-Procrastination challenge has made sure of that.  Instead of leaving every cleaning or organizing project to be a huge ordeal that takes a week to accomplish, I have been plugging away day by day on one thing at a time.

Instead of "spring cleaning" having the meaning of washing windows and curtains, moving furniture, scrubbing baseboards, and organizing drawers for a week straight, all it means to me is that I continue on doing one thing each day.  To be honest, there's really not even that much that needs to be done since I've been working on things since the beginning of the year.  We're nowhere close to 2013, but I've already decided the Anti-Procrastination challenge will be going on again in my life.  While I may not always feel like tackling one thing every day, it sure makes things easier in the long run!

What about you?  Are you dreading spring cleaning?  Are you easily overwhelmed by all that you want to accomplish?  For many of you it seems impossible to get that much cleaning done in a week's time, especially if you work or if you have small children.

Maybe you need to re-think your definition of spring cleaning.  Pick one thing to accomplish each day.  Just start with whatever it is that's bothering you the most.  Is it the cobwebs you see in the corner every time you sit down on the couch?  Or maybe the window you can't see out of because it's so dirty?  Just pick one thing and do it.  You'll only spend about 15 minutes, but you'll feel like you've accomplished so much!

Come back and tell me what you worked on today, okay?  In the meantime, I'll be spending a few minutes sucking some cobwebs out of the corners, then spending a fun-filled day enjoying my little ones!  No stress for me trying to keep them out of my way while I scrub for hours on end!






I'm linking this post to the Spring Cleaning Challenge at Amy's Finer Things