Cleaning Supplies for Spring Cleaning (Photo credit: Chiot’s Run)

Who here is still going strong with their New Year’s Resolutions?

Not this girl, unless you count spending countless hours on Pinterest pinning posts and things about de-cluttering, cleaning, and organizing your home. Other than a slew of great ideas and places to start, I’m still not as clutter-free as I know we’d like to be, nor have I set up a cleaning or meal planning schedule yet.

But no time like the present right?

The thing we often forget is that we don’t have to wait until January 1st rolls around in order to start a goal. This is something that can be done anytime of the year, you just have to be willing to make the commitment to something new. So here’s to my Spring Cleaning Resolution!

For us this year has already brought a lot of new possibilities, and a plethora of potential – we bought our first home at the end of November of last year and are expecting our first child at the beginning of June. Lots of change, lots to get ready, and lots of projects we want to do around the house to make it more “us” and less “little old lady” (we bought the house from a sweet lady who’d pretty much lived here her entire life, but more on the history of the house in a later post).

So it’s with these changes and events in mind that I’ve chosen to take on a couple of projects on myself, rather than resolutions (since projects are more likely to get completed and resolution has a connotation with failure), to work on throughout the year and beyond. What good is a positive life change if you don’t keep it up well past the year’s end, after all?

These projects include (and I’ll likely find more):

• Changing my clutter-bug habits
• Organizing our home
• Getting the house ready for our baby
• Blogging
• Going paperless

Why so many? Well, to some they’re different components of a single goal – keep our new house looking nice and clean to keep our family happy and healthy. Simplifying life means having more time to spend with our loved ones instead of frantically searching the house for that one thing we were so sure we last saw on the kitchen counter.  The reduced stress that comes from living in a less “busy” and cluttered environment is an added benefit that I look forward to as well. Clearer spaces lend themselves to clearer minds.

Tools of the trade I’m using in general:

• Evernote – Super handy app/web/desktop program that lets you create notes from just about anything, just about anywhere and keeps them all synced and accessible across multiple platforms. Mainly will be using this for the paperless part of the organization as well as to keep all those handy ideas neatly in one spot.
• Pinterest – A newer social media “pin board” that lets users “pin” and share ideas from across the internet. A handy source of articles and great ideas that lets you organize your pins into themed boards. Also a guaranteed time-suck. (But I still love it!)
• Scanner/Scanner Apps – To help with the paperless effort. Less paper = less clutter = less to organize!
• Tablet – Paper substitute, electronic brain, organizational tool, etc. (Yes, I am a tech geek as well…)
• Smart Phone(s) – More mobile electronic brains and pa
  per substitute. Plus, they are handy for making calls as well.

I plan on documenting my projects, what I’m using and my progress here in this blog along with some of the other aspects of my life (there is a reason there’s a “Geek” with the “Clutterbug”).

• Is anyone else out there getting started (or has been working on) getting their house more organized and clutter-free?
• Do you have any tips you can offer on getting started?
• What challenges have you faced when it comes to organizing your home?
• Any words of wisdom you’d like to share?

Comment below!

Related articles

• Three tips to start Spring cleaning for free! (savings.com)
• You: Get Your Home Clean and Organized This Weekend (lifehacker.com)
• Operation CDO (Clean…Declutter…Organize) Week 1! (dewdropsanddaisies.wordpress.com)