It’s week 14 and due to some internet issues across the Northeast the past few days, this post is again…late. But there is good news! After this week, we only have 4 more weeks left! How exciting is that!?!?! You will have a brand new looking home, while everyone else starts their spring cleaning! Without further hesitation, let’s get to this week’s challenge!!!

Master Bedroom

• Remove everything from the room (including under bed, night stands, the dresser top, chairs, floor, etc.)
• Give the room a good cleaning and air it out
• Wash your linens and bedsheets
  • Now might be a good time to swap out winter linens for your spring or summer linens
• Next, set up your “piles” – “keep”, “donate”, “sell”, “discard”, “remove”, and “store”
• Sort everything you removed from the room into your piles
• Next, it’s time to categorize!
• Evaluate what was and was not working in your space.
  • Do you find that your floors tend to get cluttered? Why is that?
  • Do you tend to put items (clothes, accessories, etc.) on any flat surface or a chair? Why is that?
  • The more you evaluate your space ahead of time, the better prepared you will be to create your plan
• It’s time to evaluate where your zones will be set up and if there’s anything you need (ex. storage) to create those zones.
  • Ideally we would want everything to be picked up off the floor, but if you have limited space, under-bed storage may be your only option; we just don’t want to fall into the trap of “out-of-sight out-of-mind”!
• Now that your have a plan in place, it’s time to actually organize your items and zones!
• After you’ve organized, take everything from the “remove” pile and place back in their proper place.
• Dump your “discard” pile.
• List any items you plan to sell.
• Store any items in your “store” pile. Label it with a date of 1 month from now.
• If there’s anything last week that you tried to sell but either didn’t have time or it didn’t sell, add that to your “donate” pile. Include in your donate pile any items you may have put into storage a month ago.
• Take your “donation” pile to the donation of your choosing. Make sure to do this as soon as possible so it’s not lingering in your home.

The Sweep

Continue your pickup and cleaning routine each night before bed. Put away anything from the rooms you’ve refreshed that is out of place. Give the room a spot clean. As always, if you find that some of your systems aren’t working, make some tweaks and continue to reassess as you go! I bet that the first rooms we’ve refreshed are almost, if not already, set up for optimum efficiency. Your nightly sweep of these areas should becoming easy!

Next week we are cleaning out our master closets!