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6 Green Spring Cleaning Tips

The leaves are back on the trees, daffodils are coming out—it’s springtime. But with the welcome return of good weather comes the dreaded spring cleaning. This year, mix up your old routine and be a green spring cleaning machine with our environmentally friendly tips on how to declutter and clean.

1. Do the hanger trick

Spring cleaning is a good time to reevaluate your closet. If you’re like most of us, you have a few too many clothes and you don’t wear them all—but how do you decide what stays and what goes? Try this trick: Hang all of your clothes up, making sure all of the hanger hooks are facing the same direction. Any time you wear something, turn the hanger hook around so it faces the opposite direction. After the end of the month, look at what clothes haven’t been used (they’ll be the ones facing the same direction as the beginning of the month) and consider whether they can be donated.

2. Donate

Donating your gently used or no-longer-needed items is a great way to be green while decluttering your home. Here are some places you can go with your extra things:

• Clothes and furniture: Goodwill or your local thrift store can resell your gently used items for a low price.
• Books: Your public library will take the books you don’t need anymore and put them in their rotation.
• Canned food and other nonperishables: A local food bank would be happy to take extras from your stocked pantry.
• Electronics: Some electronics stores like Best Buy will take your old computers, monitors, and other equipment to use for parts.

3. Set yourself up for recycling success

Sometimes clutter accumulates because there’s no good system set up to deal with the myriad of stuff constantly coming into your home. One way to deal with this is by designating different bins for garbage and recycling around the house. If you have a few stations around the house, it’ll be just as easy to recycle magazines, newspapers, and junk mail as it is to set it on the counter or put it in the garbage.

4. Say goodbye to your plastic bags

Most grocery stores have plastic bag recycling cans either in front of the doors or right inside. Round up all of those plastic bags you have floating around the house and recycle them at the grocery store next time you go. Then, if you haven’t already, invest in some reusable grocery bags that you can take with you to any store so you never have to deal with a plastic bag mountain again.

5. Dispose of your hazardous materials

You might find in the course of your cleaning that you need to take a trip to your local Hazardous Household Waste (HHW) facility. They’ll take things like used batteries, motor oil, paint, and more. You’ll be doing your part for the environment since the HHW facility will dispose of these materials safely, and you’ll also make some room for more important things in your garage, like your spring and summer outdoor gear!

6. Do some green cleaning

Once you’ve decluttered, you’ll be ready to green-clean your house. Check out the rest of the blog for our tips on how to get a great clean using our green staples, vinegar and baking soda. And for your spring and summer clothing that needs to be refreshed after a long winter in the closet, send your laundry to Crest Cleaners. We’ll pick it up from your doorstep and clean it with the greenest methods out there, including using GreenEarth for your dry cleaning.

On a roll with your green spring cleaning? Check out more surprising items you can recycle or repurpose. 

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