By Clara Glendale | Beacon home and garden specialities

Editor’s note: In the coming weeks, Bass Lake Beacon will focus on spring cleaning
with its “Spring Cleansing” series. This is part 1.

Now that the wind and snow of winter are past, it’s time to turn our attention to the wind and rain of spring.

With that comes the annual “spring-cleaning,” a rite of spring that can overwhelm even the most motivated person. That’s what at least one local experts says.

In a special Bass Lake Beacon series, “Spring Cleansing,” we sought some handy advice and tips. First stop: Bass Lake-area tidiness guru Heloise Johnsonman of Home Economix, to get some advice for handy ways to accomplish your spring cleaning in an earth-friendly manner.

“Earth-friendly” is important, because it’s one thing to organize your life, but quite another to pass that burden along to future generations yet-unborn.

What follows are strategies from the thrice-divorced Johnsonman, inspired by her recent blog, “Heloise Johnsonman’s Inspirational Home-Help Blog.”

Before you tackle your out-of-kilter garage or relocate those relevant yard tools, start inside your humble abode, reorganize that, then work your way outward. That’s what Johnsonman said.

Basics:

• Purge dressers, chest-of-drawers and bureaus of extraneous burdens. “If you no longer wear a pair of socks, or have an old purse or wallet and coins in there, put it all aside for a yard sale or donate it to charity or at least throw it in the garbage,” Johnsonman typed.
• Clean closets and storage areas. “You probably don’t need dried-up writing utensils or half-used cans of paint you bought in 2010 when you spruced up the bathroom,” she said, “anymore.”
• Clean the living room. “There’s a reason it’s called a ‘living room,’” Johnsonman said. “So make it a room in which you can live in.”
• Clean other rooms. This is long overdue!
• Clean (general). “Might as well just clean everything,” Johnsonman blogged. “After all, that’s the definition of spring!”

Next in the Spring-Cleansing series:
Part 2: Clean-up continues: Other advice.
Part 3: Out-of-doors: Locate those relevant yard tools
Part 4: Is your workshop a mess? You already know the answer
Part 5: It is now mid-June, and my homestead is still a disaster. Did I spend too much time reading?