Feeling The Fall Cleaning Itch? Here's Your Gentle 5-Step Guide

As another summer comes to a close, you might be feeling the home improvement itch—especially as the pandemic keeps shifting the way we use our spaces.

"I'm seeing people approach this fall almost like a big spring clean," Tracy McCubbin, a decluttering and organizational expert, tells mbg. But before you do, McCubbin has one suggestion: Be kind to yourself!

After this audit, you can do a quick declutter. As professional organizer Maeve Richmond notes, a lot of people may find that the things they previously held dear have lost some meaning since the pandemic began.

"I don't know about you, but the pandemic taught me that I don't need so much in life," Richmond says. "If you haven't already started letting go of things—it's time." For help deciding what stays and what goes, check out mbg's comprehensive guide to decluttering, and remember this advice from McCubbin: If you haven't used it in the last 18 months that you've spent at home, you're not going to use it!

There's no need to tackle your whole home in a day. But if there's anything that immediately sticks out as something to sell, donate, or (responsibly!) toss, now's the time to do so.

While it's hard to know what the future holds, consider what you need your home to do for you right now, in this particular moment of what McCubbin calls our "pre-post-pandemic" world.

Are you still doing a lot of virtual meetings? One of your projects for the fall could be decking out your Zoom cocoon so it's more functional and comfortable. "Move things around—clean and clear and shift the camera 'just so' to avoid awkward door frames or overtly cluttered shelves [in the background]," Richmond recommends.

Are your days of dressing up for the office behind you? Maybe you'll want to rejigger your closet to put casual favorites at the forefront and uncomfortable heels at the back.

Next, it's time to map out the parts of your home that you think could use a touch-up. While you might be tempted to write them down into a big, binding master list, Richmond actually cautions against it. Previously a to-do list devotee, in pandemic times she's found value in a more lax approach.

"The magical thing that occurs when the earth stops spinning even for a bit is that our brains slow down too. And when our brains slow down, clarity appears," she says. "It was during this clarity that I realized, everything I need to do will happen when it is supposed to happen."

With this mental checklist stored away, you can go about your fall with an idea of the things you'd like to get done, that you feel will have the biggest impact on your space and your quality of life.

In the name of being gentle with yourself, McCubbin recommends tackling them in bite-size chunks (30 minutes here and there as you're listening to music or a podcast) and taking organizational shortcuts where you can. These are the really quick touch-ups that take next to no effort but have a big payoff in terms of how they make a space feel.

While it only takes a few minutes (and can be done with the TV on), McCubbin says that transferring clothes to matching hangers has a super high reward. Plus, it's a low-stakes way to revisit your closet and maybe think about letting go of anything that isn't worth the trip to its new home.

As far as types of hangers, she likes thin felted ones for everyday clothes and IKEA's thicker wooden ones for coats and heavier items.

For the piles of stuff that you don't have the wherewithal to meticulously sort through right now, McCubbin says that popping them in clear containers is an easy way to at least give them a home, ensuring that they stay easy to find. While she's not usually a fan of plastic (who is?), she admits that reusable plastic containers are one of the first things she beelines for during trips to the Container Store.

And for that jewelry or dinnerware drawer that you had big plans to organize to the nines but haven't gotten around to, McCubbin suggests decking it out in a felt liner.

It's a similar idea to the closet hangers: As you add things back, you may find it easy to do a little extra decluttering. If not, no big deal, you still got some pretty new drawers out of it!