The One Spring Cleaning Tip Nobody Puts on the Checklist

Happy First Day of Spring.

The sun is back, the birds are singing, and somewhere in your soul an ancient voice just whispered to you: clean something, you filthy animal.

But before you do — I have a confession.

There are storage bins sitting in my living room right now, patiently waiting to be filled with Christmas ornaments that are currently shoved in a disorganized box. Christmas was three months ago. The bins have been there so long they've basically become furniture.

And the garage. Skis. Snow gear. Poles. Boots. Scattered everywhere across a space that has not seen an actual car parked inside it in what I can only describe as years. It is less a garage and more a winter sports museum nobody asked to see.

I share this because you have your version of the bins. You have your version of the garage. We all do. We have good intentions of completion right before we are interrupted by our next emergency work call, or child interrupting your process every 5 minutes with a “Mom! Mom! Mooooooooom! Where is (insert lost item that is half dry sitting in the drying machine that turned off way too early)?!)

Feeling disorganized doesn’t make you a bad person. It just means that you need a new system.

As James Clear says “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

So let’s create a system but first start with the mental game because here's what I've learned: the physical pile and the mental pile are the same pile. Just in different rooms.

A cluttered environment raises cortisol — your stress hormone. It signals to the brain that work is unfinished, that there is no safe place to fully land. A cluttered mind does the same thing to the body. When you clear both, something shifts that is genuinely more than the sum of its parts.

Every tree outside right now is running the same program: release what is dead, make room for what is new, point everything toward the light.

The Christmas ornaments are not the point. The ski gear is not the point. The point is that every unfinished thing in our physical space is a mirror of something unfinished in our internal one — and spring is the invitation to finally, actually deal with it.

You are allowed to do that.

And unlike the tree, you can also just hire someone to deal with the gutters.

Clear the mind first. The bins will still be there — they always are.

Three steps to get started (and this time, actually finish before you turn on Netflix!):

1. Brain dump first. Ten minutes, paper, everything that's taking up space in your head. Then sort it: act on it, feel it, or release it. The unfinished conversation. The half-made decision. The goal quietly moving itself to next quarter. Get it out of your head and onto paper where you can actually see it. Such a simple, yet POWERFUL tool!

2. Finish one thing completely. The bins exist because I had great intentions and got pulled away before finishing. That half-started energy lives in the mind too. This spring, pick one thing — one shelf, one drawer, one box of ornaments — and finish it entirely before touching anything else. Your nervous system needs a template for what done feels like.

3. Start with your bedroom. Before the garage — the bedroom. Three minutes to make the bed. A calm room quietly tells your brain: today begins from order. The garage is a May project. The bedroom is a Tuesday.

Every unfinished thing in your physical space is a mirror of something unfinished internally. Spring is the invitation to deal with it.

The Christmas ornaments are getting filled this weekend. The skis are getting hung on the wall. I've said it publicly now so it has to happen.

Pick your bins. Finish the thing.

P.S. If your mental spring cleaning keeps uncovering the same pile no matter how many times you sort it — that's a subconscious pattern problem, not a cleaning one. That's exactly what Back Pocket Virtual Coaching was built for.