Oh I love this time of the year. It means that we can finally open our windows and let the fresh spring air in. We can finally get outside and take a walk and we can finally enjoy more than just a few hours of sunshine. I love spring for so many reasons, but one of the main reasons is because I can clean out my closet, rotate my shoes and get rid of all my unused/unwanted items. That’s right, it’s April and it’s time for spring cleaning.
Do you give your house a top to bottom clean during the spring time? Maybe you paint your walls a fresh new color, maybe you brighten up your rooms with new decorative pillows and new bedding or maybe you just put on your rubber gloves and get into it up to your elbows.
Do you think that spring cleaning a personal habit sparked from years of tradition or is it a personal ritual that marks the beginning of a new season and warmer things to come? Let me ask you a question, before you start cleaning your home from top to bottom you have to figure out if it is really worth your time?
Why do you love spring cleaning?
Maybe you want to rid your home of winter dust bunnies, maybe you want to redecorate or maybe you want to get rid of your unused items and donate them to those who are less fortunate. But does your home really need it or are you just getting in the mood for spring?
Chase Blueprint® recently released their time-worth calculator, check it out and you’ll quickly learn that sometimes it just doesn’t pay to do it yourself if it costs you too much time. Just like everything in life we have to decide where we are going to spend our time and how much of an effort we are going to put into our tasks, our lives and our budgets.
At the end of the day we have to be happy and some people feel that cleaning is very therapeutic. I don’t particularly love the task of cleaning, but I absolutely love how my apartment looks after I am done. What does that say about me?
Would you let someone else come into your house to clean?
Maybe it’s better to hire outside help to get the job done rather than spend the time and make the effort to do it yourself. This doesn’t only apply to spring cleaning; it applies to all other tasks in our lives. It also applies to the items that we want to buy in life – the item (or the task) has to be worth the cost before we pay money to buy it.
According to a nationwide survey conducted by LearnVest and Chase Blueprint®, respondents said that they’re willing to spend $24 on a dinner entrée and $71 on a pair of shoes. Viewed through this lens, would you be willing to skip a few dinners out to hire someone else to help you sort through all those old shoes in your jam-packed closet?
Photo by gogreener
At the current time I would not hire out any cleaning duties, mainly because we have a lot of debt to pay down and things to save for. If I had less debt and more cash inflow I would seriously consider hiring someone to help with cleaning and/or other household tasks that take up free time.
Given the right situation, I would hire someone to come in and clean our house. I realize there is a cost involved, but the time savings could definitely be worth it. I am one of those that view cleaning as therapeutic and enjoy it, but the time savings would be tempting.