After what's felt like the longest winter in the history of mankind, spring is finally here! This season represents regrowth, rebirth, and renewal, which makes it the perfect time to freshen up yourself and your surroundings.

While I'm sure the concept of spring cleaning isn't new to any of you, there are so many ways to invite positive energy into your apartment or dorm room aside from your basic dusting and window scrubbing. Read on to learn about my favorite ways to spring clean your life.  

1. Get Organized

For me, the biggest part of spring cleaning is to organize absolutely anything I can get my hands on. It's so easy to let your things sneak away and end up in places where they don't belong (how did your bra end up in the microwave again?!?), but taking a few minutes here and there to put everything in its place is a small but effective step in your spring cleaning routine. 

In my experience, bathrooms and countertops can get especially chaotic if you don't pay special attention to keeping them neat every day. Investing in some cute bins to separate your hair, face, and body products are a really great way to keep everything organized and visually appealing, plus you can buy them practically anywhere and they're usually pretty inexpensive. 

2. Purge Your Closet

This is a tricky, time consuming, and emotionally draining process, but it's a very important step towards embracing the freshness of the season. There are a number of ways that you can clean out your closet, but my favorite method is to take everything out and only put back items that you love and wear often. Donate or sell what you choose to get rid of, and make a conscious effort to only keep the things that bring you joy and make you feel good!

It's helpful to have a friend there to help you make those inevitably tough decisions, such as whether or not you should keep your favorite shirt from high school, or that dress you wore on your first date with that one guy that now has a giant mustard stain on it.
  
(Bonus points if this friend is brutally honest and refuses to have any sympathy for your nostalgia or hoarding tendencies. Test their strength as a detox coach by crying over every article of clothing that you decide to toss - if they don't tell you to suck it up and pull yourself together, toss them, too.)

3. Refresh Your Surroundings 

Once you've decluttered and organized everything, it's time to mix things up! Rearranging furniture or trying a new paint color in a room is a great way to channel freshness and energy into a space. This is my favorite part of spring cleaning because it has such an immediate effect on your mood, even if you do something as simple as buy new throw pillows for your bed. 

Another simple way to decorate with things you already own is to organize your books by color, or spend some time experimenting with different ways to display and store your makeup or jewelry collection. Get creative, have fun, and let your space be a reflection of who you are and what you love!

4. Do a Digital Sweep 

Even when my laundry is done, my bed is made, and I've organized my underwear by color and cheek coverage (just kidding, sort of), there are moments when I still feel a little scattered. In the world we live in today, we spend as much time online as we do interacting within the physical spaces around us, so it makes sense that our digital surroundings should be neat and tidy, too.

Clean up and organize your computer's desktop, save old files to an external hard drive, erase unimportant e-mails, and upload all of those holiday pictures from your phone to your computer or flash drive. Doing these things will not only give your devices more memory space, they'll also make you feel less cluttered and more organized. 

What are your thoughts?

What did you think? Did you find this post helpful? What are your spring cleaning rituals? Leave a comment with your favorite tips and tricks and get the conversation started!