Spring Cleaning and Home Expense Planning in Five Easy Steps

Spring cleaning in 5 steps!

Here are the five steps to make spring cleaning a ritual of cleaning and financial planning.

Depending on your schedule and the help you can get from your loved ones, do one or two rooms a week using our Spring Cleaning Guide.*

1. Distribute the tasks to be performed among family members. To ensure effective tracking of completed tasks, use our large task board!
2. Perform the tasks all together.
3. Identify what needs urgent repair or replacement, what will need it in the medium term, and what you want to add or change in your decor.
4. Prioritize repairs, additions, and/or changes.
5. Determine the budget needed for each modification and set up a savings plan (download our little combine to help you track it!)

Being prepared to avoid debt or cancellation of other projects

It's always frustrating to have to cross off a project we care about (like a trip or a wedding, for example!) because we haven't planned for certain house-related expenses. It's also not wise to put it all on a credit card and thus increase our debt ratio. That being said, with a little organization, changing appliances, redoing the roof, or repairing an aging staircase can easily be budgeted for. Here, we have ritualized the famous spring cleaning so that, in addition to cleaning everything, we inspect the house and plan and budget for upcoming expenses.

Before, we tended to spend on unnecessary things (wants rather than actual needs!), when we should have saved our money for more important and costly repairs to come. This year, we realized that the shed roof needed to be redone by summer and that insulating the basement would allow us to make significant savings on our electricity bill. I also have desires like everyone else. I would really like to change the bathroom tiles, which I find ugly. I dream of changing my electric hand mixer for a stand mixer and buying new bedside tables and lamps.

Unfortunately, our bank account has its limits, and I will have to make choices. By creating the budget, I will certainly realize that the purchase of certain accessories such as bedside tables and lamps, as well as the stand mixer, will have to wait until next year.

To make a list of projects you would like to undertake in the future or purchases you would like to make for the house, print this little combine and keep it safe in your family organization binder!

Involving Children

Here, children participate to the extent of what they are capable of doing. They help us with the big clean-up in exchange for a few "task" tokens from the General Store. Since last year, our eldest, Louis, has been very curious about our way of doing things and asks about what needs repairing in the house, the priorities we've set, and the associated costs. He is slowly assimilating the notions of need and desire, and also the value of things. It's an excellent learning situation for him. There's nothing better than learning from real-life situations!

Ready for your first "spring cleaning and budget forecasting" ritual?

* For an even more comprehensive home maintenance guide, consult our Annual Home Maintenance Guide/Exterior and Heavy Work!

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