10 Easy Tips to 'Spring Clean' Your Home

Marcia Ramsland, a Life Organizing Coach, is offering a coaching course this month to help people declutter their homes. She graciously agreed to share 10 helpful UPGRADE Your Home tips.

“Need a winter boost and it’s not quite spring? You can create the freshness of a spring cleaning inside your heart and home,” Marcia said, “by taking some decisive action.”

I love the spring cleaning concept. I always have. But that doesn’t mean I like spring cleaning. Maybe it’s because I’ve never had a plan.

Marcia continues …

This could be any day at your home just by lacing up your gym shoes and stepping up the pace. Just look around you. Would any of these 10 Tips spruce up your home?

1. Vacuum your home and let some fresh breezes in. The whole house – and your outlook -will begin to take shape and look fresher.

2. Wash your bedding and change your blankets. Get rid of musty and dusty.

3. Put away winter coats, boots, and mittens, cleaning as you go through the front and back closets by the entrances.

4. Wash the windows to clear out winter gray that blocks your view. (Average 5-10 minutes per window).

5. Clear away piles by recycling newspapers, catalogs and newspapers that may have accumulated over the winter.

6. Sweep out the garage and wash the cars. Vacuum, wax, and change the oil in your car to get ready for spring and summer trips.

7. Clean up your desktop for a fresh start at work, too. No need to live with left over paperwork from the winter. Get it done, filed, and cleared up to get outside with the longer sunny days approaching.

8. Clean your closet by seasonally changing clothes and bringing out spring attire. Wash, iron, and mend before your clothes get put away. Giveaway clothes you didn’t wear and don’t like.

9. Shop for something new to wear for spring. When you feel better about how you look, people notice and even treat you better!

10. Clean out the refrigerator and make a fresh food meal of what’s in season. A social event or picnic can be a delightful celebration that you’ve finished your Spring Cleaning early!

These 10 Action Steps remind me of what was once said about a wise woman in the Bible and how she handled her home:

"The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down” (Proverbs 14:1).

I challenge my audiences and YOU to be a “Wise Woman” and build your home and family life by taking charge of the state of your home.

Whether you decide to thoroughly clean on a weekday or a weekend, don’t wait for a sunny day. Any day can be “Spring Cleaning Day.”

Which two steps would make the biggest difference in your home right now? You can do it—starting today!

Marcia Ramsland, a Life Organizing Coach, International Speaker, and Best-Selling Author, is committed to helping women break through barriers to simplify and succeed in life. She is well known as the “Organizing Pro” and nationally appears in Better Homes and Garden, Woman’s Day, Real Simple magazines, the Wall Street Journal and Martha Stewart radio.   

Beginning March 20, Marcia is offering a special 4-Week Coaching Course for busy women—“Simplify Your Space: A Room by Room DeCluttering Action Plan at Home!” Register at OrganizingPro.com.

5 Tips to Strategically Simplify Your Holiday Season!

Do you tend to get a wee bit frantic as November and December arrive each year?

Marcia Ramsland wants to help you UPGRADE your holidays and relieve some stress with some positive strategies.

“If you do anything more than once in life, organize it and simplify it," Marcia wrote in Simplify Your Holiday Season. "That’s especially true for the holidays that come year after year like clockwork.“   

Two years ago, I finally understood what Marcia meant as I felt the weeks snowballing toward Christmas. Last year, I took her wise advice.

She continues ...

There is one date that signals we’re only 8 weeks away Christmas every year – November 1^st! Knowing that, you can be ready and sail through the holidays by planning well.

Here are Five Tips to Get Ready Early and make it the peaceful Thanksgiving and Christmas season you’ve always dreamed of.

1. Mark Your Holiday Dates for November and December. 

Thanksgiving is “late” this year on November 28, which means Christmas is only 3 ½ weeks after Thanksgiving. It might seem that Christmas comes early this year. It will! That’s why we have to accelerate things before Thanksgiving.

2. Write A Master Gift List.

List the names of people that you are planning to give gifts to. Better yet, find your list from last year and follow that same order early in November.

Can’t find last year’s list? Download a 2013 Free Master Gift List and Holiday Calendar.

3. Organize Your Gift Wrap Center.

Right now you don’t have to wrap any gifts. Just organize these seven items in an under-the-bed box or drawer: holiday wrapping paper, gift bags, gift tags, fresh tissue paper, bows & ribbons, scotch tape, and a dedicated pen. Get it organized and ready to use.

4. Plan Ahead by Writing Things Down

Mark your calendar with family coming to town, favorite concerts, kids' school vacation dates and business vacation days. This forms the structure for your holiday season.

5. Sort Your Holiday Decorations Early

The best weekend to put up Christmas decorations this year will be Thanksgiving weekend, but not turning on lights until December 1. That way you can enjoy them for five weeks before taking them down on New Year’s weekend.

Donate what you don’t use early in December. Why?

• Someone else can enjoy your excess decorations this Christmas.
• Charities won't take them after Christmas because they don't have room to store them for 11 months.

Free up space by donating this year!

Planning is powerful! And with a good plan and your eye on the calendar, you can simplify your holiday season. Instead of playing “catch-up” and feeling stressed, you will experience freedom and calm.

And this year, you can say like the angelic heavenly host who praised God appeared to the shepherds and said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests” (Luke 2:13-14).

Dear God, today as I work on preparing my heart and home for Christmas, may I reflect on the events of the first Christmas and find strength in knowing you have a special plan for my holidays this year.” Amen.

What do you do to start planning for the holiday season?

Marcia Ramsland, the author of two holiday books: Simplify Your Holiday Season: Turn Seasonal Stress into Holiday Success and Simply December Devotions, was a recent spokesperson for Sam’s Club Holiday Entertaining.

Download a free 2013 Holiday Calendar and Master Gift List at OrganizingPro.com. 

10 Tips to Control Your In-Box

Meet organizing professional Marcia Ramsland, who can help you upgrade your email efficiency.

Marcia says an abundance of emails in your In-Box is “the beginning of a complicated life."

“Clean up your In-Box,” she said, “and leave each day relaxed knowing your email is under your control.”

Marcia’s 10 Email Tips to Deal with Email Efficiently:  

1. Read and Respond. Decide what to do the FIRST time you open an email. Do it now or it will double the time it takes to respond. The key is to pause and decide what action is needed.

2. Clear it Out. Once you’ve read and responded, move it out of your In-Box with “Delete or Archive.” In “Archive” it’s still there to search by key word. Gmail now has a “Send & Archive” button that does the work in one click.

3. Rely on the “Search” feature to pull up emails. Instead of creating an elaborate File Folder system, learn to search by the person’s name or email.

4. Tame Your “Reading” File. Keep the good blogs &newsletters in this file that pass your way. Read them mid afternoon or at the end of the day. Delete the file contents daily or weekly.

5. Create No more than 6-10 Key Email Folders. “Responded,” Holding”, or “Archive” are great for once you’ve responded. Move out emails prior to 3 months ago “Archive before (date).”

6. Don’t “Over File” with too many specific folders. Create no more than 6-10 folders by program, action steps, or project. It’s time-consuming to put them into any more folders than that. Rely on the “Search” feature to pull up emails.

7. Create “Rules” in Outlook or “Filters” in Gmail. This lets email bypass your In-Box and land in a folder you want to keep such as: the name of an organization, “Coupons” from Costco, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon, or “Personal” for interesting forwards.

8. Keep a “Follow-up” folder if needed. This is for emails you respond to but you need to know the other person did their part. Check it at the end of the week to see if everything’s taken care of or forward the email and ask if they got it.

9. Set times to do email and don’t let it become your To Do list! Twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon are adequate.

10. Begin and end each day by getting your email down to your Target Number. A single digit or number under 20 email in your In-Box puts you in the driver’s seat of your life.

Set a Goal to Cut Your Email in Half each Week!
Get there by keeping track on your calendar of how many you leave in your In-Box each day. Intentionally whittle down the count.

Marcia Ramsland is well known as "The Organizing Pro" for her practical skills and tips to manage busy lives. She is an author, speaker and national media guest in magazines, radio, and TV. One of her popular books, Simplify Your Life, is now an Online Class series, "Simplify Your Life: 7 Weeks to a NEW Organized You!" For more resources from Marcia, visit organizingpro.com.