Spring is here! Time to do some spring cleaning! Whether you are a working mom or a stay-at-home mom, it is hard to find time to keep your house in order. I’ve got some easy tips for spring cleaning for busy moms, so if you need some help with how to spring clean, read on!

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I am not an expert homemaker. I have been a stay-at-home mom for almost fifteen years now, and I am still learning, growing, and improving myself. Like I tell you on my about me page, one of the purposes of my website is to do research on stuff and then share what I learn with you. I have spent a lot of time trying to get better at homemaking over the years. So my focus today is how to spring clean, and I can’t wait to share with you what I have learned!

Decluttering

First things first – get the stuff you don’t need out of your house! You don’t want to spring clean stuff you don’t even want, right?!?! I have found a couple of great ways to do this, and make some money as a stay-at-home mom at the same time.

1. Go through your kids’ closets and figure out what they don’t need. If you have tweens and teens like me, this is something they can do to help. Hand them three bags: one for garbage, one for stuff to save (favorite toys and books for the eventual grandkids, for example), one for stuff to sell/donate (books, toys, clothes that are in okay shape but they don’t ever need to see again). Motivate them by telling them that any toys or books they are willing to sell can become money in their pocket! Personally, I don’t give them the money for the clothes I sell because – hello – they need me to buy them more clothes. Not to mention I bought all those clothes in the first place, whereas toys and such might have been gifts or something they bought with their own money.
2. While they do that, take a look at the rest of the house and decide what is worth selling or donating, and what should be thrown out. If you need help on how to do this, check out the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle 2019. It includes a bunch of resources to help with decluttering and organization.
3. Take those sell/donate bags and separate them. This is a mom job – the kids tend not to know what is worth your time trying to sell and what you just want to donate. It’s also up to you to decide if you want to sell anything. If you are a two-income household, it may not be worth your time and you should just donate it all. If you are like me, you would be thrilled to get an extra $5.
4. Once I’ve got my pile of stuff to sell, I organize it. For example, I take all of my daughter’s clothes and sort the items by size. I have found it works well to batch them into “lots” and sell them in a batch rather than trying to go piece by piece. I need to keep it simple or I’ll go bonkers. If I have a super cute item to sell I may list it alone or with as a cute outfit to make a bit more money. Batching the clothes doesn’t maximize the amount of money you can make, but it gets the clutter out of your house faster.
5. I have been successful in selling clothes on Mercari.com as well as on Nextdoor and Facebook. If you choose to use Facebook, I would suggest sticking to local groups for this purpose. If you open it up to the larger Marketplace, you get more randos and more headaches.

Michelle at Stay Rosie Mama wrote a post I love about how to declutter, and she included lots of cute organizing ideas. Click here to read her best organizing hacks.

Start the cleaning!

Pick one room to start with. I chose my living room for two reasons:

1. It’s a room we spend a lot of time in, so it would be so nice if it were cleaner.
2. It’s the easiest one in my house, so I get to see results fast! Super motivating.

When you do your spring cleaning, you want to get all the little jobs done that you may not do the rest of the year – things like cleaning window tracks and cleaning under the couch. You need a good list of reminders for every little thing. I’ve researched that for you!

Sarah White of Planning Inspired has an awesome spring cleaning printable – you can even choose which color you want! If you need some guidance on how to spring clean like I do, here is the link to her spring cleaning printable. I chose pink. Then I printed out enough copies so that I had one square for each room in my house. I needed two extra copies since we have three bedrooms. Next, I cut out enough squares and labeled them, and taped the extras onto a piece of blank paper. I don’t know about you, but having cute lists to check off is mega motivating for me! Here is how it looks:

Here is a close-up of one of the squares. I’m showing you my living room one since that’s the room I started with. I went in there and looked around. I used Sarah’s ideas, crossed out what I didn’t need, and added what else I needed to do in the blanks she provided. I love that she made it flexible, and I love crossing things off as I’m done! Plus, the pink makes it more fun and motivates me to fill it out. Silly, but real!

Lana Pummill of Finding Inspiration in the Chaos has a helpful article with some super handy specifics for how to clean stubborn areas. Click here to check out her tips for spring cleaning.

After I cleaned my living room, I decided to reward myself. We have a cat scratching post that’s been around for years. Our cats love it, and they have scratched it so much that it now drops bits of material every day that spread around the room and make vacuuming an even bigger pain. So, I decided that girls who get their spring cleaning on deserve a new cat scratch post that doesn’t shed incessantly!

My cats had also been wrecking our laundry basket for years, so my husband and I decided we deserved a new one of those, too!

Target has some super deals going on this time of year for sprucing up your home. I figure if you take $20 from selling those clothes and things you no longer need and put it towards a cute new small item, like hand towels or a toothbrush holder – you’ll be so happy you’ll want to clean some more!

I’m also thinking that when I’m done with the whole house, I’ll schedule some professional carpet cleaners to come and perfect the job! Delia Barnes of Kidschaosconfusion.com has a similar idea – she suggests you hire some window washers. You can read her article about spring cleaning hacks.

Once you finish your spring cleaning, it is important to make a plan for what to do next. Now that your home is clean, you have the challenge of maintaining it all year round. If you can keep it up, you’ll never have to face it again as one big job to tackle.

Make a cleaning schedule that works for you

When I first started on my homemaking journey, I found a terrific website by Leslie Lambert called Lamberts Lately. She has some fantastic ideas about how to organize your cleaning schedule. She suggests that you have a daily routine, some goals specific to each day of the week, and also a “room of the week.” Each day after performing your everyday tasks (such as making beds and unloading the dishwasher), you perform a limited number of tasks for the specific day (such as vacuuming a specific room), followed by tackling one or two things in your room of the week.

I printed out her free printable, and then I tweaked it for my own needs. For example, I added “scoop cat litter” to my daily tasks because we have cats. If you want to see her post, I’ve linked to her cleaning routine.

I’m very excited to tell you that Leslie’s Journey to Clean 33-page ebook, that she normally offers for $15.99, is included in the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle 2019! The entire bundle, with 104 ebooks, printables, videos and more is only $29.97, which is 98% off regular price! I ordered my bundle and I am so excited to check out all of the homemaking goodness!

The Ultimate Homemaking Bundle 2019 is only available until May 6. I am giving away one copy to one lucky reader on May 4 – just sign up for my newsletter, and you are automatically entered!

I have also gotten guidance from Sarah White of Planning Inspired. She’s the one I mentioned above with the free spring cleaning printable. She is the printable queen! Years ago I purchased some great printables from her Etsy shop.

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I used them to make a household binder. Inside I have tabs for cleaning schedules, meal planning, and household items such as a list of passwords. I put a daily to-do list in the front, as well as my cleaning schedule mentioned above from Lamberts Lately.

Sarah also has some great goal setting worksheets if you just need some help getting your life organized overall. This picture above shows two of hers that I regularly use plus the one from Lamberts Lately.

I recently read a new super helpful article by Lindsey at Bantermama.com. She came up with a one-hour cleaning routine that works. She focuses on how to keep things efficient and simple, and how to make it work for you. I love it! Click to read her awesome tips for creating your own cleaning routine. In the post, she also has a link to some easy-to-use free cleaning printables.

Tazia at Mind of Mom also has some real-life tips for keeping up with the mess in your life. Click here for her cleaning tips. She also has some super-cute free to-do lists to check out.

Some of my favorite cleaning supplies include my Swiffer Sweeper Vac and Swiffer Wetjet. Both are so easy to use and lightweight. I also use leather wipes to clean my couch, and I love Mrs Meyers’ lavender scented all-purpose cleaner. It makes my home smell so fresh!

Finishing Touches

When you finish your spring cleaning, reward yourself! Take the time to rearrange your decorations, and maybe update what is on your mantel or hanging on your wall. I love to put out spring-themed decorations. My favorites are some wooden tulips we bought on our trip to The Netherlands, which I put on my kitchen’s decorative shelves along with some art my kids made for me when they were little.

It’s also nice to buy yourself some flowers, or maybe light a pretty candle with a fresh scent.

Enjoy your refreshed home! If you have more tips about how to spring clean, I’d love to hear them!