Free Spring Cleaning Worksheet for Your Home
Spring Cleaning for your home and life.
TIME FOR A SPRING REFRESH
I am a firm believer that our moods and energy are influenced in large part by our physical space. And so I still practice the age old tradition of spring and fall house cleaning. One of the ways I bring A LOT of Intentional Joy into my life is with a freshly cleaned home. In the spirit of Ostara, this lesson includes steps for a spring refresh - focusing on how you want to feel in your space, as well as how to incorporate some magickal elements into your spring cleaning.
Use this spring cleaning worksheet as a guide for an easy spring clean that will leave you and your home feeling refreshed and ready for the new season.
DO A QUICK DECLUTTER
Do a quick pick up of the room you are cleaning and take care of anything that doesn’t belong there. In my house this usually includes books and notebooks on the living room coffee table, empty tea mugs (#dontjudgeme), shoes scattered on the floor, and so on….
Next remove most the rooms decorations and knickknacks, which tend to accumulate over time. You can add back in anything you’d like, but by emptying the room as much as possible, it is easier to clean and you can get a better sense of how you want the space to feel as you put it all back together.
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ASSESS HOW THE ROOM FEELS
Once the room is mostly picked up, close your eyes and allow yourself to feel the energy of the space. Using this free worksheet, write down how the room makes you feel. When I did this in exercise in my living room, I found that it felt cluttered and stagnant. Even with the windows wide open and the sun shining in, it just felt tired.
THINK ABOUT HOW YOU WANT THE SPACE TO FEEL
How do you want the space to feel? Because it is the living room and is used by everyone in our family most evenings, I wanted it to feel comfortable and inviting, but also be spacious and have more energy to it. I wanted to feel good when I was relaxing in the space, not like I was just waiting to go to bed.
CLEAN THE SURFACES & REARRANGE AS NEEDED
Give all the surfaces of the room a good wipe down using your favorite cleaner. Vacuum and dusting the furniture and floors. Rearrange the furniture as needed. I find that moving the furniture in a space is the best way to break up stagnant energy. If you aren’t sure how to rearrange your room in way that feels good, or in the case of my living room, have a really awkward space your are working with, I recommend picking up a copy of Where Do I Put The Couch, which answers a lot of home decorating questions.
Once the room is cleaned and rearranged, go ahead and add back in your decorations.
ADD IN YOUR OWN MAGICKAL ELEMENTS
As I’ve mentioned before I don’t do much in the way of spells or other rituals. I just kind of go by my feelings. When a space feels good, I stop. You can certainly go beyond basic cleaning and rearranging with activities like smudging your space or casting a protective spell or two. The Way of the Hedge Witch is a great place to start, if you looking for some guidance and inspiration. Ostara is a great time to add in some fresh flowers to your space, along with some vibrant spring colored fabrics, candles or other accents décor.
If doing a full spring clean of your entire home feels too overwhelming (I feel you), focus on the areas where you spend the most time. Pick one room and set a timer for 30 minutes and see what you can get done. You’d be surprised how much progress you can make in such a short time. When I just want to do a quick pick up and declutter I always focus on my living room, kitchen counters, entry way or bedroom. I don’t worry about my kids' rooms (that is their space - I don’t try to control it), the bathroom, closets or any other places in the house that I don’t spend a lot of time in.
SPRING CLEAN YOUR DIGITAL LIFE
Consider Spring cleaning your electronics and digital spaces as well. We have a whole part of our life that is not tangible. Emails, texts, photos, spam add clutter to our inboxes and phones - and ultimately to our minds. Take some time to clean out your email inbox and phone. File important things away for reference and delete the rest! Again, if this feels overwhelming, set a timer and see how much you can get done in 10 or 15 minutes.
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How I Shop on ThredUp - and find great deals!
Find great thrifted deals on ThredUp
One of my favorite places to shop online is the second hand fashion site, ThredUp. At first I was nervous about buying second hand clothes online, but after my first order I was hooked. The quality of the items and low prices were better than anything I could find locally.
I live in a rural area and the clothes in our local thrift stores and consignment shops don’t offer a lot of variety, sizes or brands. There’s a lot of Wal-Mart and Old Navy clothing available and that’s about it. Meanwhile, ThredUp offers ALL.THE.BRANDS.
Just like in-person thrift shopping, online consignment shopping requires some strategy and skill to find the best deals. Here is how I use ThredUp to refresh my wardrobe each season.
Several Thred-Up Items I bought over the past few months.
Start With a List
While sometimes it’s fun to poke around and window shop online, I find this loosey-goosey approach leads to impulse buys of items I don’t really need or won’t actually wear. So when I decide it’s time for a wardrobe refresh, I make a list of items that I need or want. While I may end up buying things not on the list, just like in a brick and mortar store, going in with some sort of plan generally keeps me focused and saves me money and time.
Use the ThredUp Filters
Thred Up has thousands of items. Literally, thousands. You could spend days sifting through all the available clothes and accessories. As someone who does not want to spend all day on anything, let alone shopping, I use the filters Thred Up provides to drill down to the items that I would be most interested in. The filters I regularly include include:
Size
Depending on the brand of clothing, sizes can differ widely. Generally more higher end items run much smaller than larger brands like Old Navy or Sonoma. So I select my main size, US XLarge and will go a size down and size up. This means my filter includes items that are listed as large, XLarge, and XXL/1x. This ensures I get a good variety of choices for any items.
A note about sizing up: For the longest time I avoided ever sizing up a dress size. As part of lifelong conditioning by the Western Toxic Diet Culture, I believed if I bought a size bigger than I thought I should be, I was conceding defeat and losing the battle to shrink my body. For years I squeezed into medium dress sizes, telling myself that they would fit better when I just lost that last 5,10, 15 pounds. As a mid-sized woman, not only was I hella uncomfortable, it reinforced the idea that my body was something to be berated and hated and that if I wasn’t actively trying to shrink it or reshape it, I was lazy and undisciplined. When I finally decided to jump off the diet wagon once and for all, I began buying clothes that actually fit me and were comfortable. Sometimes that is a size large, or, depending on the brand, an XLarge or even a 1x. The sizes are simply guidelines for my body. They are not measurements of my worth as a person.
Condition ( aka Wear & Tear)
Thred Up gives you four conditions - Like New With Tags, Excellent, Good and Fair. I usually select Like New and Excellent. Most often I find that the prices on Good and Fair items are too high, for purchasing something that looks and feels second hand. My exception to this rule is anything made of leather, because worn leather often looks better than new, and jeans, especially levi’s. Because broken-in jeans are the best, imo.
Brand
I choose brands that I know will fit me well. Many higher end brands, which I wouldn’t buy anyway, run really small. For example, an extra large from Tory Burch brand has a 34 inch chest! Brands I regularly buy on Thred Up include Ann Taylor Loft, Gap, Old Navy, Daisy Fuentes, Land’s End, LL Bean, Levi’s, and Apartment 9. I feel like these brands fit most average sized women.
Price
Just because ThredUp is a second hand clothing site doesn’t mean everything on it is cheap. It carries a wide range of high end fashion items that run into the hundreds of dollars. And while it may delight many shoppers to find such good deals on brands like xx or xx, my tastes run a bit more beer and burgers. I usually set the filter for under $50 for outwear, shoes and jeans and under $25 for everything else. This lower price point still gives me more than enough options to choose from!
Color
I love this feature because it allows me to weed out any items that are in the wrong color. Generally, I wear the same palette of colors through most of the year. This includes pink, coral (so I select orange in the ThredUp filter) yellow, green, black, white and blue. I avoid purple, because it is not a color that I usually like to wear. Same with brown and gray, as they tend to wash me out. And while I like the color red, unless I am shopping for a holiday outfit, I tend to skip it. You can also filter by pattern or solid.
Fabric
I usually filter fabric depending on the type of item I am looking for. For example, for summer dresses I like a lighter, breathable fabric like cotton versus wool or polyester. For worktops I prefer Rayon because they don’t wrinkle.
So there you have it. A complete beginner’s guide to shopping on ThredUp! If you’d like some fashion inspiration to help you get started, especially if you are mid-sized or plus-sized, be sure to check out my fashion boards on Pinterest.
