Spring Cleaning: Piles and Shelves

It's almost March 21, so it's time to celebrate the transition from the drab, monochrome cold wetness of winter to the gentle colors, fresh energy, and cool wetness of spring. Many people, myself included, get the urge around this time to do some spring cleaning, which includes dusting, washing, and general decluttering. But how does this work when at least half of your worldly possessions consist of books, and you're not the household librarian?

What Does the Internet Say About Spring Cleaning?

A whole lot! As I was going down rabbit holes for this post, I discovered that there are apparently as many "rules" for cleaning in general, and spring cleaning specifically, as there are whole numbers.

1. Spring clean once per year.
2. 10-minute rule, tidying up each morning. Almost identical to the 5-minute daily decluttering rule.
3. 80-20 rule, that most improvement comes from least cleaning.
4. 5 principles of cleaning products (more for industry than for homeowners).
5. 2-minute rule, identical to the 1-minute rule (if it takes that long, do it right away).
6. 20/20 rule, for the worth in time or dollars of an item to be decluttered. (I'm German enough that I rarely follow this.)
7. 10/30 rule, for putting things away or finishing the last little bits of a task in 10 footsteps or 30 seconds added on.

It was also interesting to see my plan (see below) being recommended for older adults. I am not an older adult, but I do have a toddler. Like 71% of spring cleaners, because of the toddler, I needed to spread out my cleaning schedule into an entire week of spring break. Also, I noticed that during spring cleaning, I gravitate toward a day-task schedule rather than a day-room schedule. However, during the rest of the year, I'll generally zero in on one room, or a part of a room, at a time. This is an extension of my general to-do list strategy: break up big projects (rooms) into tiny tasks, power through tasks, check off items, experience satisfaction.

What I Planned to Do

Since my personality doesn't really let me truly stop working for more than a few days, I made an ambitious task list that acknowledged my additional desires to (1) go outside as much as possible, (2) do enough of my paid job from home that I could save the PTO days for when I really needed them, and (3) get some more social interaction in. As fellow mothers of toddlers know, the need for adult conversation is quite acute before one's children learn how to talk at an adult level.

My plan for the house itself was the most thorough:

• Outside and inside surfaces of everything, especially kitchen appliances and toilets/sinks
• All bedding (resulting in 4 or 5 loads) because of recent illness in the household
• The languishing filing system in the office (in a pile in front of the cabinet for months)
• Sort, declutter, and potentially seasonally transition my and Child's clothes
• As much fresh air and sunlight into the house as possible
• As much cat hair out of the house and furniture and rugs as possible
• Get rid of the spots of dried coffee, milk, spit-up, and cat puke all over the floor
• Transition to some spring-type decorations . . . more on that in the next section!

In work-related tasks, I planned to catch up on busywork (continuing-education webinars, background reading, and syllabus development for a curriculum I am developing).

For the 1,500+ books we own as joint marital property, I knew that since Husband brought about 80% of them into the marriage, my cleaning decisions were limited. Currently, we have stacks of books on every surface except the shelves, as a massive TBR list of sorts, so the most I saw myself realistically getting done was dusting. Our current baby-proofing strategy, to keep Child from removing all books from the lower shelves, is to Velcro sheets of thin plexiglass across the bottom 2-2.5 shelves that he can reach so far. The trouble is, not all the Velcro is sticking. My next strategy is to keep my eye out for old bicycle inner tubes to prevent just enough access.

If I had been more ambitious, there's a whole process for spring cleaning one's personal library:

1. Remove all books from the shelves? (Nope . . . I don't maintain the organizational system!)
2. Dust bookshelves, covers, and edges? Can do!
3. Go one by one through the books to determine which ones to keep? Only for my personal books.
4. Repair books? Not needed, because we make sure to have intact editions.
5. Have a single library space? Yes, we already have our entire downstairs.
6. Scour one's physical TBR list? That is something we do year-round.

What Actually Happened

I am writing the bulk of this post on Thursday, having started cleaning on Monday. As you can see from all the arrows in the photo, some tasks got moved around. What you don't see, though, is the number of tasks that took multiple days to complete. Let's annotate the list from above to see what changes I made on the fly.

• Outside and inside surfaces of everything. This turned into a whole-week task; I felt really productive on Wednesday, so I tackled the entire kitchen, the main throw rug, and sweeping and mopping the indoors on that day. Toilets will happen this morning because I have company coming.
• All bedding (resulting in 4 or 5 loads) because of recent illness in the household. This got moved from Monday to Tuesday because the illness lasted longer than anticipated, so I didn't have access to the bedding until then.
• The languishing filing system in the office. Wednesdays are normally my most productive day for mentally intensive tasks like this, but it may need to wait until tomorrow or Saturday.
• Sort, declutter, and potentially seasonally transition my and Child's clothes. Happened on schedule, aside from cutting worn-out clothes for a rag rug that took 2 days.
• As much fresh air and sunlight into the house as possible. Aside from a day with random precipitation, this happened on schedule, with slight rearrangement of which rooms got aired out on which days.
• As much cat hair out of the house and furniture and rugs as possible. Done on schedule! Vacuuming, though, took 2 days, in no small part because Child is at the age where vacuum cleaners cause deathly screams.
• Get rid of the spots of dried coffee, milk, spit-up, and cat puke all over the floor. This happened on kitchen day.
• Transition to some spring-type decorations. On our front table, I currently have some faux bouquets from our wedding reception, which unfortunately the cat ("Fuzzypaws" to distinguish him from his usually-better-behaved sister) is eating. I knew because of the cats and books that neither Myquillyn Smith's Welcome Home, nor Marie Kondo's method, would work. I think I'll just switch around the blankets once there are no more snowfalls.

Additionally, I focused on sleep hygiene for myself due to Daylight Savings Time, which I hope will end very soon. Child, surprisingly, handled it like nothing happened. Keeping my books out of Child's reach is not difficult at the moment--he is preoccupied with the cat toys' ottomans, so my book ottoman with a blanket on top of it has been outside of his curiosity zone.

Will my TBR Change?

I don't think my list will change significantly. That said, I do need to work on replacements for my major distractors of phone and YouTube (cautionary articles about the dopamine-cleanse fad here and here; not how I planned to do it anyway). I can't quite work myself up to putting "Read for pleasure" as a planner item for all or most days of the week, because it feels like another new project, which I don't want to take on but want to have completed.

However, I did make a surprise addition to my TBR: Charlotte Mason's Philosophy of Education, which I got on the 15th by signing up as an ambassador with Smidgen Press. Very excited to read this ebook!