A Minimalist Spring Cleaning Checklist: Reset your Home and Life

by Amy Cai

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The timing of spring never fails to bring about a renewed sense of optimism to my life.

Finally, the dreary and cold days of winter are over. Daylight saving hours have restarted,

and our late afternoons and early evenings feel that much brighter and longer.

For those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s like we’ve gotten a second chance at a new year in March – a chance to do all the things we said we would do but never got around to doing at the start of January.

The best and most obvious place to start is with a spring clean – a purge of the old, the bad and the necessary things from your life, so that you’re left with a clean and fresh slate.

As a self-confessed minimalist, the act of taking the trash, both in my home and in my life, brings an unmatched sense of joy and peace. It is the single greatest thing you can do to reinvigorate your mental wellbeing for the rest of the year.

If you’re about to embark on your annual spring clean, here is a checklist of minimalist actions that you can take to help you reset your home and life.

Spring Clean the Home

1. De-clutter your living space

We begin with clearing out the most visible part of your home, the part where you and your guests will spend the most of your time in – your living space.

This is a great place to start in your spring clean, as it also makes the most obvious difference to your home. Clear out your living room and you’ll instantly feel lighter. The minimalist rule here is that less is more – the fewer objects you have cluttering this space, the more spacious it will feel.

Furniture companies and interior design glossies will try to sell you on the necessity of coffee table books, and candles, and matching side tables. But often, the professionally shot pictures you see of living spaces are done in extremely large homes, where everything is also staged for a picture rather than for functional living. You absolutely do not need to display accessories that serve a purely aesthetic value and ultimately clutter your space.

Things to clear out, move into storage or sell:

Books, magazines or papers that you don’t read
Decorations you rarely look at or use like candles
Furniture pieces that don’t serve a real function

2. Purge your Wardrobe

There is nothing more cathartic than the act of throwing out old clothes you’ve carried in your wardrobe ever since you left for college.

As Marie Kondo famously puts it, only keep that which sparks joy. If your old hoodie from 10 years ago still gets worn all the time and makes you feel like a rockstar, then it’s a classic wardrobe piece to keep.

But the clothes that represent older versions of you have got to go. A minimalist wardrobe consists only of clothes that reflect the person you are now or want to be. It’s not a wardrobe that’s dictated by the latest trends, or by what the people around you are wearing.

Take this is an opportunity to ask yourself what you want your clothes to say about you.

Here are some ideas on things to clear out:

– Clothes that you bought for a brief fashion trend and never wore again

– Old handbags you never use anymore

– Shoes you’ve either worn down or have never worn

– Cheap jewelry pieces you bought in college or from an art fair

Once you’ve compiled everything, clear out your old pieces by:

– Giving them on to a friend whose style is more suited to your old clothes

– Donating them to a charity

– Putting any expensive pieces up for re-sale

– Selling your clothes to a secondhand store

3. Throw out your old makeup and skincare

This is probably going to be one of the hardest things to tick off your spring cleaning checklist.

First, start by checking the expiration time of your beauty products. Every beauty product comes with a small icon indicating the Period After Opening, which is how long you can use the product after its first use.

It’s important to take your expiration dates seriously, as time can alter the active ingredients in your products. Vitamin C is quick to oxidize and has a notoriously short shelf life, causing it to lose its potency after just three to six months. On the other hand, acids like salicylic acid or glycolic acid also become more potent over time, and using them past their shelf life can damage your skin.

Using expired makeup is just as bad – other than not looking as good as it once did when applied, the bacteria in the expired product can also trigger your skin to break out.

Throwing out the expensive beauty products you bought on last year’s Sephora sale is probably going to hurt. It’s going to feel like you’re throwing money straight down the drain. But as tempting as it can be to keep the lipstick you purchased two years ago that’s practically brand new, there’s a good chance that the formula is no longer safe for your lips. You would never keep food that has long passed its expiry date – so why should you with beauty products?

Once you’ve thrown out the old, be mindful about what new products you then bring in. Don’t repeat and purchase the same products you didn’t use before. At the end of the day, if you didn’t use it before, you’re most likely not going to starting use it now.

Spring Clean your Life

1. Revisit the goals you set at the start of the year

It’s time to return to the feeling of optimism we brought to the start of January. What ambitious goals did you set for yourself at the start of 2024? How many of them are you still actively working on?

You’re not alone if you feel like these goals have long been forgotten – a recent Forbes Health/One Poll Survey found that just 22% of the new year’s resolutions made by their respondents had lasted three months.

This is therefore a great time to remind yourself of what you were hoping to achieve. If you haven’t been working on your goals, ask yourself why. Maybe you gave yourself too many goals, or maybe your goals simply weren’t achievable.

In any case, don’t wallow in the guilt of falling short. Take this as the opportunity for you to rework your goals. Find one or two goals that matter the most to you and plan out the realistic and actionable steps you can start taking now.

If you never set any goals at the start of the year, then consider this your second chance to create a vision for the next 12 months. What are the aspects of your life that you want to improve on? How do you want to design your life?

2. Start your Digital Detox

Lets face it – we all spend too much time on our phones. Every productivity guru in the world has told us that we need to reduce our digital if we want to be more focused and purposeful with our time.

Cal Newport, one of the world’s leading productivity experts, has a book called Digital Minimalism which offers a great guide on how to create a life without digital distractions.

A few simple things you can start doing today:

– Declutter your phone and reduce your screen distractions.

– Empty your promotions inbox and unsubscribe. A minimalist mindset is purchasing things when you need them, and not because you’ve succumbed to seasonal promotions and consumer cycles dictated by marketers.

– Pick up an offline hobby or activity that can fill up your free time. Bring a friend along, if you need added accountability.

3. Throw out your bad habits and toxic traits

With our daylight hours getting longer, we no longer have the excuse of winter to keep us inactive and glued to our phones. There’s no better time than now to call out your bad habits and behaviors, and work on getting rid of them.

You have probably heard of the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. As one of the world’s bestselling personal development books, Atomic Habits has launched a cultural movement around the importance of building habits. It provides an extremely practical guide on breaking bad habits and forming new ones. I have returned to this book many times over the years, whenever I need a reminder that bad behavior, no matter how deeply entrenched it is, can always be broken.

Beyond this book, therapy has also played a significant role in helping me become aware of my toxic behaviors. Regularly seeing my therapist has helped to hold me accountable for my actions, and it has given me the tools to move past my negative tendencies.

If there has ever been a perfect time to start working on yourself, let it be this one.