By Christina Morton DesAuguste
Christina is the founder of The Organizing Company and has been organizing professionally since 2013. She is currently loving Grüns gummy supplements and the new Netflix show, With Love, Meghan.
No A.I. copy & paste here! All our blogs are still written by humans.
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It may not officially be spring yet, but I’m already there in my mind. And I’ve started resetting my home by getting everything put back where it belongs, curating and eliminating unnecessary items, and reorganizing a bit to make things more functional for the warmer seasons.
If you missed last week’s blog post about spring cleaning and spring organizing, pause here and read that first as a way of introduction.
I distinguish spring organizing as its own exercise, but as a vital prerequisite to spring cleaning, which includes doing a deep clean of your home, including activities like dusting, scrubbing, polishing, washing, vacuuming, mopping, sanitizing, etc of your home and its furnishings.
Spring organizing is the practice of resetting your spaces by decluttering, curating (aka purging), and reorganizing so everything has a designated home based on what is used most during the spring and summer months.
I call it resetting your spaces not only because things may rotate based on the season, but also because it’s about getting things back on track so your home is more manageable the rest of the year. It doesn’t always need a total overhaul. Sometimes it’s more of an adjustment and tweaking things or simply making sure the stuff you’re keeping really is stuff you want or need to keep.
Of course, if your house does need a total overhaul, a reset still very much applies because the focus is all about getting the house back in order. It’s just more about creating that order than restoring it. And your reset might take a bit more time and effort than the person who is already generally organized and tidy.
You may have also caught that I mentioned the homes you create should be based on what will get the most use in the coming months. Many of us live in homes that require some seasonal swaps, as I like to call them.
I’ll share more specifics about seasonal swaps in coming blog posts, but for now just tuck it in the back of your mind that you’ll want to contain items you’ll use more in the spring/summer in prime real estate.
Okay, so you know what spring organizing is. Now how do you do it in an orderly fashion?
I’ve got you.
I’ve put together a plan with two tracks based on how organized or unorganized you currently are. For each track I’ll share the steps you can take to reset your home this spring.
Track 1: The Creating Order Track
As you can probably guess, this track is for those of you who are a bit unorganized. Maybe there are lots of piles around the house, or most surfaces are covered in clutter, or there are loose items on the floor (I’ll overlook that outfit you tried on and didn’t have time to hang back up this morning, but anything more probably puts you in this group). If you would (or if less considerate people would) call yourself messy, this is the right track for you.
And if you’re on this track, get excited. Not because organizing is fun (although it is for me), but because you’re about to truly transform your home. You’re going to create a beautiful, functional, orderly environment that gives you peace, energy, and more time for the things in life you do think are fun. It’ll be a lot of work, but it is so worth it. As my tagline so beautifully puts it, “Life’s better when it’s put together” (special shout out to my bestie, Elle, who came up with that for me).
In this track you’re going to go through the full organizing process in each area of your home. If you’re not familiar with my process, or method, you can get a free guide (video plus PDF) below.
Going through this full process will ensure that you have decluttered the surfaces of your home, that you’ve gotten rid of anything you don’t want/need, and that you’ve created homes for everything. Plus, it will help you come up with a plan to keep it all organized.
If you already know my process, you may be wondering how to implement it in your house as a whole. What order should you organize each room?
Here is the order I use to organize not just your home, but also your time (you gotta make the time to organize the physical stuff, afterall!) and your digital files. I laid it out as a checklist so you can celebrate your accomplishments along the way and stay on track. In the PDF I also included a cheatsheet of my method so you always know what step is next.
Once you’ve completed that, you’re ready for spring cleaning! More info on that soon!
Track 2: The Restoring Order Track
This track is for those of you who are already generally organized and tidy. Everything has a home and 90% of it is currently in those homes. There is minimal clutter on surfaces, nothing loose on the floor, and each drawer and cabinet has clear (and likely labeled) categories. People comment on how tidy and organized your home is.
If you’re on this track, you’ve already done most of the work mentioned in Track 1. So you get to skip ahead a bit!
Here are the key phases you should work through:
Phase 1: Restore
Put things back where they belong. This is essentially sorting (the first hands on step in my process), but instead of pulling everything out to make groups, you’re returning items to their groups wherever they currently belong. I would work through the whole house to do this phase before moving on to 2 and 3. If something is new and doesn’t have a home, at least get it to the proper room/area and you’ll revisit it in Phase 3.
*If this takes more than 5-15 minutes per room, you probably need to jump back to Track 1. Or, if after 1-3 rooms you realize that fewer items have a home than you thought, jump back to Track 1.
Phase 2: Curate
Since you already have things sorted in your home, and you just put everything back where it belongs, it’ll be easy for you to go through each category and determine if there’s anything you want to get rid of. I would curate all items/categories in a room (or ideally in the whole house) before moving onto Phase 3 in case you decide to change where items are stored.
Phase 3: Reorganize
This is when you rework an area to incorporate anything that didn’t have a home, or you reorganize it so it’s more functional after you got rid of some stuff. This is also when you can make little seasonal swaps to get warm weather things in the best places in your closet/mudroom/garage, etc. This phase is covering steps 4 & 5 of my method (Zone It and Contain It), but you’ve already done most of the work and are just making adjustments here.
For most of you, this work should take a weekend, or maybe two. But it’s also a good candidate for the bit-by-bit approach if you only have 15-30 minutes per day.
To help you move through each room in an organized fashion, you can use this checklist. Going in this order will be the most efficient way to work through a whole house.
Psst! I also included a cheatsheet of my method if you need to do a deeper dive in any area.
If you feel like you’re somewhere in the middle between these two paths, here are a couple other examples to help you determine which track is for you:
-Are your counters/surfaces clear but it’s chaos inside drawers and cabinets?
Yes = Track 1.
-Did you recently move and never really got to properly unpack in an organized fashion so things are contained but there isn’t a lot of logic to it or a great flow? Yes = Track 1.
-Is your closet sorted by category: short sleeve tops, long sleeve tops, jackets & blazers, dresses & skirts, etc? Yes = Track 2.
-Is your ‘junk drawer’ organized with drawer organizers and labels? Yes = Track 2.
-If all the descriptions of Track 2 sound like you except in just one room, go to Track 2 and do the full process just in that room. Seriously, only ONE room though.
Whichever track you’re on, you’re going to accomplish the same things:
You’ll declutter the surfaces of your home, get rid of anything you don’t want/need, and create logical and organized homes for everything. Check. Check. Check.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed or like you need a bit more guidance or encouragement along the way, I’ve got one more thing for you next week. So make sure you’re on my email list to get notified! Downloading one of the items above will get you on the list or click below!
Happy Spring Organizing!
Christina
PS: I’ve also got more info coming on spring cleaning, so don’t miss it!
March 13th, 2025
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