The weather is warming up, and it’s time to give your house a deep cleaning for spring. Are you excited, or are there actually about a million other things you’d rather be doing? If you fall into the second of those two groups, you’re not alone. One recent survey suggests that over half of all Americans dread spring cleaning more than any other yearly event.

Here’s something to think about, though – if you truly despise spring cleaning, maybe it’s because you’re not doing things as efficiently as you could be. Maybe your home doesn’t smell as nice as it should, for instance, because you’re making some lifestyle decisions that aren’t conducive to having a fresh-smelling home. It’s possible that cleaning your house is more difficult than it should be because the layout isn’t right for efficient cleaning or because you have more stuff than you really need.

Whatever your reason might be for dreading spring cleaning, we’ll give you some advice in this guide that can help to address the issue. These hacks will help you approach your next house cleaning project in a more productive way and get more done with less effort. Who knows – maybe this year, spring cleaning will actually be fun.

Get Rid of the Things You Don’t Need

Before you begin any major cleaning project, it’s a very good idea to go through your things and determine whether you have any items that you don’t really need. After all, it’s a lot easier to find storage space for the excess clutter in your home if you have fewer things to put away. Go through your closets, attic and basement and identify any items that you’re no longer using. For getting those items out of the house, you have several options.

  • You can sell them on an auction site like eBay.
  • You can sell them on a classified ad site like Craigslist.
  • You can hold a garage sale.
  • You can give unwanted items to friends and family.
  • You can donate unwanted items to goodwill.
  • You can rent space in a storage facility for items that you don’t want to keep in your house but aren’t ready sell or give away.

Spring cleaning is a great time to reduce the clutter in your home, and here’s the best part. Reducing clutter doesn’t just make cleaning easier – it also reduces your body’s production of the “stress hormone” cortisol, which will make you feel better in the long run.

Stop Doing Things That Make Your Home Dirtier or Smellier

Although spring cleaning is an event that many people particularly dread, even routine cleaning isn’t an especially fun time. The easiest way to make things better is by examining some of your lifestyle decisions and identifying some positive changes you can make to promote a cleaner and fresher-smelling environment. Here are few examples that might be relevant for your situation.

  • Quit smoking, or at least stop smoking in your home. Buy a vape kit and some Pod Juice that you can use instead when you crave nicotine.
  • Don’t procrastinate when it comes to taking out the trash or cleaning the cat’s litter box.
  • Deodorize your sinks regularly by pouring foaming bleach alternative down the drains and following with hot water.
  • Vacuum and/or mop your floors regularly. The more often you clean your floors, the easier the job will be.
  • Don’t keep old, smelly food in the refrigerator. If you aren’t going to eat it, throw it away.

Plan Upgrades That Will Make Your Home Easier to Clean

Do you have a little extra money kicking around this spring? If you do, it’s worthwhile to think about putting some of that money toward upgrades that can make it easier to keep your house clean. Things like replacing carpet with tile, replacing resin sinks with stainless steel or porcelain and installing new storage are worth the expense in the long run because they’ll make your environment more livable and reduce the amount of time that you spend cleaning. If you don’t have extra money right now, it’s worth saving up for anything that makes it easier to keep your home clean.

Clean Your Home in the Most Efficient Way

When you plan your spring-cleaning project, keep these two things in mind in order to make the project as successful as it can be.

  • You may not have time to do everything that you’d like to do, so focus your energy on the things that are likely to make the biggest difference in the way your home looks or smells. Eliminating clutter is one of the best things that you can do to make your house look nicer, and going over the carpet with a steam cleaner can make an enormous difference in the way your home smells. If an item on your to-do list isn’t likely to make a big difference, save it for last.
  • When you clean a room in your home, always start at the top because dust and debris will work their way downward as you clean. Start with the ceiling and finish with the floor. If you start at the bottom, the floor will be dirty again by the time you finish cleaning the walls, furniture and ceiling.

Buy Tools That Do the Work for You

Have you ever found that your home looks dirty or smells musty again almost as soon as you’ve cleaned it? If so, you need to buy some tools that can do some of the work for you. Here are two of the best investments that you can make to reduce the dust, allergens and unpleasant smells in your home.

  • Buy bags of activated charcoal online or at your local home improvement store. Put them under sinks, in closets, under furniture, near pet toys and in other locations where unwanted odors tend to collect. Activated charcoal is an extremely absorbent substance, and it’s very good at trapping odor-causing molecules.
  • For even better reduction of odors and allergens, consider buying a good air purifier. The best air filters have HEPA stages for allergen reduction and activated charcoal stages for odor absorption. When you shop for air purifiers, remember that the really effective ones always have large filter stages, and they aren’t cheap. An air purifier that will actually make a difference in the way your home smells will cost anywhere from several hundred to a thousand dollars. Once you’ve made that investment, though, the filter media is relatively affordable and doesn’t need to be replaced too often.