Spring has officially sprung in (most) of Colorado. The tulips, crocuses, and daffodils are in bloom. More people than just “that guy” are out and about in just shorts and a t-shirt. The strawberries at the grocery actually taste like something again. While I do enjoy being able to crack my windows and not send the thermostat into a frenzy, the coming of spring is also a reminder of all the cleaning, organizing, and general getting rid of things that I’ve put off during the winter.
Spring cleaning can be daunting, especially for educators dealing with testing, the rehiring period, and end of school year deadlines, but cleaning can also be good for us. Spring cleaning is part of the phenomenon social scientists call a “temporal landmark”, a moment that stands out in time often the start of something, that has been associated with increases in motivation. These temporal landmarks like the coming of spring allow us to mentally break with our past performance and experience the “fresh start effect”, which has been shown to improve feelings of self-efficacy in arenas where we have been struggling. In cleaning our spaces during this transitional period, we can both take advantage of potential increases in motivation and extend the feeling of starting fresh by changing our frequently used spaces. Cleaning our physical spaces can also lend a sense of control, which is often lacking in stressful times but has a positive impact on emotional well-being. Additionally, tackling our to-do lists can create a sense of accomplishment that is both destressing and motivating, and can help us get to the bigger tasks.
But how do we tackle the amorphous blob of a task that is “spring cleaning”? We hack it. Using tricks commonly suggested to folks with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and a few I’ve identified for myself, we can make spring cleaning more manageable. The best part is that you can use these tricks to help make other tasks easier, plus your students may also find them useful.
Break it down.
With big tasks like cleaning and organizing your whole home, classroom, or office, it often takes a lot of time and work to reach the end. Our brains are wired to seek out the feel-good moment that comes from achievement, but with these big tasks that moment is often too far away. By breaking it down into smaller tasks, we create more opportunities for achievement and those feel-good reward chemicals like dopamine. For some, tackling the task room by room is rewarding enough. But I like to go even smaller, for example, “go through jackets” versus “go through clothes” or consider “mop floors” an entirely different task from “vacuum”. Go a step further and separate tasks physically. When doing laundry, I like to separate items into different baskets and piles based on where they go and how they are folded. Each empty basket and disappearing pile increases my visual sense of accomplishment and the organizational system streamlines the process.
Write it down and check it off.
Making a to do list is critical in many ways. Writing things down helps us focus on what really matters and actually think through what needs to be done. This also means that we no longer have do the mental labor of remembering what needs to be done, which has the added bonus of avoiding the icky feeling of thinking you finished and then realizing you forgot something. Both writing the list and checking off each task you complete creates additional feel-good achievement moments. Additionally, rewriting the list each day highlights our achievements through looking at all the checked off items and our increasingly shorter spring-cleaning to-do lists.
Organize it.
Try to write down your to-do lists in a particular order. By putting things in an order the represents the best work flow, you never need to think about what makes the most sense to do next. For spring cleaning there are two general methods: by room or by tool. When going room by room, you have the advantage of being able to look back at a fully cleaned room when heading to the next room, but that also means all of your cleaning materials and tools need to be out all the time. Alternatively, mopping all the floors at once means only one type of cleaning tools are needed but it may not be as satisfying as seeing a fully cleaned space. When creating your list, think about what would be most functional for your space and the most rewarding.
Body double.
Body doubling refers to doing a task with someone else – either in person or virtually. Working with someone else can help with task initiation and help increase the motivation to work by inducing feel good hormones in our brain through the social interaction. Additionally, having a body double can create a sense of accountability to a person outside of ourselves, which can be very motivating. Even just telling someone else about our goals has been found to actually increase the chance that we will achieve those goals.
Gamify it.
Turn your tasks into a game. There are many ways to do this but one of the best ways can be by creating a task deadline. If you are working alone, a great way to do this is to try to finish the task before the end of one of your favorite upbeat songs. Not only is it fun to listen to music but you are also creating a sense of urgency that can be very energizing but nonthreatening. If you live with someone else, make it a competition. See who can finish a room or task first and then inspect each other’s work for quality. Winning is the cherry on top of an achievement sundae.
Make it nice.
While many of us may never actually like the act of cleaning or organizing, there are ways to at least make it nicer. Playing favorite songs or podcasts (visual media can be distracting so I would stay away from TV), is a classic but that is only one sense. Try finding cleaning products that smell really good or include scent sachets in your organized items. Cleaning tools in fun colors or that make you feel like a Jetson or a fairy or whatever floats your boat. Use organizers and containers are visually appealing. In doing so we can induce our brains to find the task more rewarding in the doing and not just the completing.
Get rid of it.
It is often difficult to get rid of the things we find when going through our spaces. To help with this I like to put all of the items I am struggling with in one place. Individually each item can feel really important but often in a pile, that importance wanes and it becomes easier to just rid myself of the lot. Other times it can be hard to let go because I’ve convinced myself I might need or want it in the future. Often this is just an excuse. To rid myself of the fantasy, I put those items in a specific place and set a calendar event for a few months down the road. If I have not used those items and in fact have actually forgotten what was there, then it is safe to say they can go.
It can also be hard to figure out how to get rid of those things we have decided it is time for them to go. Below is a list resources for finding options near you.
For clothing and other textiles:
- American Recyclers (drop boxes)
- Retold Recycling (online)
- Denim (online and in person)
- Bras (online or drop off sites)
- Underwear (online)
For more than just clothes:
- Denver Metro options
- Goodwill
- Arc Thrift Stores
- Terracycle (beauty containers too)
- Check your local Buy Nothing group to give items away and maybe find something you need for free (through Facebook tends to work better)
For electronics:
- Check with your local waste management utility.
- Best Buy (in person)
- Staples (in person or shipped)
- Walmart (ship it for a gift card)
For stuff that can’t (or shouldn’t) just go in the trash:
- Items such as batteries, e-cigarettes, medications, and house paint should not be thrown out in your normal trash. These items contain chemicals that can cause harm to humans, animals, and the environment. Many of these chemicals can start serious fires.
- County register of hazardous waste sites
Check out Donate Good Stuff and Earth911 for more help.
The ADHD brain is wired differently. Dopamine, one of the chemicals in our brains strongly associated with pleasurable reward and motivation, is “lower” in the ADHD brain. Thus, folks with ADHD often struggle with motivation deficits and benefit from tools that can help them overcome a motivation hump. We all sometimes struggle with feeling motivated, though, and tackling big tasks like spring cleaning is frequently when we struggle the most. Ergo, we can use the tricks for our ADHD friends to hack our spring cleaning.
Mohr, D. C., Cuijpers, P., & Lehman, K. (2011). Supportive accountability: a model for providing human support to enhance adherence to eHealth interventions. Journal of medical Internet research, 13(1), e30. https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.1602
