As warmer temperatures are finally on the horizon and with spring break coming up, I’m getting that nagging urge to spring clean. I have this annoyingly chirpy voice in my head telling me to “Throw everything out,” “Become a minimalist,” and “You can clean your room in a couple of hours!” But as a I look around my bedroom packed to the gills with strewn papers, used coffee mugs, piles of laundry, a collapsed mountain of shoes from when the rack on my door broke a month ago, I realize I don’t even know where to start. I don’t know what to throw out. Clearly from my extensive book, DVD and record collection I can never be a minimalist and with the towering stacks of scarves, boots, and magazines littering my floor, my room is definitely not getting clean in an afternoon. Then I started thinking of all the things cluttering up my life not as tangible as old Coke cans or dirty clothes. 

So much of my personal and school life is spent on my YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, Gmail, and Netflix accounts, and clutter inevitably happens there too. I have no self control and because I initially try to follow, friend and subscribe to as many people as possible, I get overwhelmed and things start to pile up after awhile. I’m a YouTube junkie, but I only watch about 12 channels a day. I have loads of friends on Facebook, but I very rarely message people I don’t talk to face-to-face. I follow hundreds of blogs on Tumblr, but I never, ever get through my feed. I ignore emails that aren’t dropped into my “Primary” tab because sorting through the others is truly terrifying. I maxed out my Netflix queue months ago (if anyone is wondering, it’s 500), but I continue to repeatedly watch a handful of the same TV shows. 

I don’t even want to think about what’s happening on other online platforms I haven’t visited in months. 

My personal life can get cluttered up too, with piled-up frustrations between friends, miscommunications in a relationship or the mutual ignoring of a big problem that needs to be discussed. It’s easy for me to let everything slide and pretend that everything is okay but sooner or later, everything stacks and piles and clutters up and I am left feeling annoyed and exhausted trying to wade through it all.

I’m recognizing now (as obvious as it really is) that in order to keep up with everything in my life, new beginnings, clean slates and fresh starts shouldn’t just be assigned to specific days and times of the year. New resolutions and goals shouldn’t just be for New Year’s and spring cleaning and the attitudes attached to it shouldn’t only happen when warmer temperatures resurface after the chilly winter. 

As I get a short burst of can-do, manic attitude to get as much done as possible, I have to tell myself I can’t get everything done at once. Prickly relationships can’t be fixed in one day, nor can my Netflix queue, eight loads of laundry, or my terrifyingly large email inbox. Spring cleaning will still be around when my procrastination habits subside, but I have to start somewhere, even if it’s just deleting that one pesky email from Amazon letting me know that things I don’t want are on sale.