As a Chicagoan, if it is one thing I look forward to every year, it’s saying goodbye to winter. Hello, fresh air. Goodbye, bulky sweaters and big blankets. It’s time to bust out the patio furniture and fire up the grill. But this year is a little different. As spring was approaching, so was coronavirus.

Instead of flocking to stores to buy flowers and shrubs, people were stocking up on cleaning supplies and toilet paper to get them through Chicago’s shelter-in-place. But as the saying goes, every dark cloud has a silver lining.

This year, spring cleaning takes on a different meaning. Many of us are taking our time in isolation as an opportunity to deep clean, declutter, organize, and refresh our living spaces. The following are some of our favorite sites, shows, and books to inspire your spring cleaning, whatever that may entail.

Clean

1. Real Simple magazine published an A-to-Z guide on how to clean almost anything in a slideshow format. In addition to the slideshow, viewers can also access their ultimate cleaning checklist.
2. If you are concerned about COVID-19 germs, the CDC recently published a comprehensive article on everyday steps you can take to clean and disinfect your home when someone is sick. A downloadable PDF file is available for future reference.
3. For those with limited time, CNN Health produced a video on how to clean and disinfect your home properly to stay safe.

Declutter and Organize

1. For those who prefer to binge-watch shows on Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon, if you haven’t yet heard of or watched Tidying Up with Marie Kondo (we’d be surprised if you haven’t), perhaps this will be that “spark” you need to get decluttering and organizing. This show is filled with great tips and tricks to get your home in pristine shape.
2. If you are the bookworm type, consider reading, The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life. The author, Joshua Becker, also has a website, Becoming Minimalist, which is full of decluttering tips and resources.
3. For those taking on decluttering an entire home, popular lifestyle website The Spruce wrote a great article on how to declutter your home room by room. The article breaks down home decluttering in stages, so you don’t feel completely overwhelmed.

Refresh and Update

1. Popular home and garden site, HGTV, recently posted an article focused on refreshing the exterior of your home. Visitors can view a nicely laid out gallery of 10 things to focus on outside.
2. Although written in 2015, this Elle Décor article provides five simple ways to refresh a home for spring that doesn’t require a big budget or store runs.
3. Home and décor site, Apartment Therapy, make spring cleaning a whole lot easier with its engaging daily list composed of 20 different tiles. Choose what room or zone you want to work on, depending on your mood.

From deep cleaning and disinfecting to refreshing and decluttering, we hope these resources help you find new ways to spend your days indoors. And if all that decluttering and organization results in you needing additional storage, we’re only a phone call away.

Happy Spring Cleaning!