I’ve never been much of a spring cleaning person.
My mom was. Every year, in early spring (which in New Mexico would literally sometimes be February) my mom would throw open every window and door — regardless of external temperature — and start sweeping and dusting and wiping and scrubbing and laundering and polishing and even painting everything in site. It was the time when the china cabinet got completely emptied and every piece carefully hand washed and all the class fronts cleaned. All the curtains and lace sheers got hand or machine washed, all the blankets and winter linens would be cleaned and stored. Coats of paint with names like “feather” and “curd” and “cream” would get thrown up on the already immaculate walls. The carpets were shampooed with a rented machine and the rugs were hung up out back, literally beaten with a broom, and then hosed off with a pressure washer and left to dry in the sun. The heater was decommissioned and the swamp cooler was enabled, a process that for some reason involved closing every ceiling vent in the house except one, in succession, and then holding a screened box under the open vent while my dad alternately turned the unit off and on, all coordinated by walkie-talkie.
I hated every minute of it.
As an adult, I’m a less fussy about the state of my house and I’m also specifically adverse to spring cleaning. In fact, over the years our household has always done fall cleaning instead. End of the summer, getting ready for the winter holiday season, final nice days before the bad weather sets in… fall cleaning gets my vote every time.
But I’m afraid that my mom’s particular form of spring fever has impacted me, just in a different way. Because spring is the time of year that I find myself rethinking my processes and planning tools. Without conscious thought, I start revisiting old techniques and sampling new ones, trying different tools, and pondering how I want things to run. It’s likely I’ll buy myself a new bullet journal or some spiffy pens. I’ll download 15 apps on my phone and then uninstall them all. If there’s a need for a new desk or filling cabinet, spring will be when it happens. There’s always an element of “this time I’ll get it right and thing will stay organized forever!” Of course, that’s never the case because re-freshening the process is part of the process. But hope springs eternal.
This year my spring-planning-cleaning seems particularly focused on CircleThrice. After a year of being mostly on auto-pilot, I’m thinking about how to update and refresh my processes to, you know, provide more value with less maintenance and coordination. Which is why, if you are a newsletter subscriber, you SHOULD be getting an excerpt and link to this very post in your inbox on Monday… and a review of new content every Monday from now on. It’s a way of combining all the good — and free — stuff in one place, hand delivered to you on the regular.
For my Patreon subscribers, I’m going to be working on the March planner this coming week and, with luck, you’ll be seeing additional updates mid-month with more helpful content. So more for your money and all that. I’ve been wanting to do this, based on your feedback, for months, but am only just feeling caught up enough to do it.
So here’s to spring and energy and to my mother’s good influence on me (even if I didn’t always want to be influenced).
