Spring cleaning starts with decluttering, Fort Erie organizer says

Most people cannot afford to take a week off work for a whole-house overhaul, and Michelle Kolozetti says that is exactly why the annual spring clean so often stays unfinished.

For Fort Erie residents staring down another season of accumulated clutter, Kolozetti, a professional home organizer with Simple Sanctuary Home Organization, has a counterintuitive starting point: before you scrub anything, get rid of as much as you can.

Kolozetti told Fort Erie Radio that the fantasy of one heroic cleaning push before a holiday or a weekend visit is just that.

“This is not something you can say, ‘I’m going to do a huge house declutter and spring clean before Easter, or before I have people over on the weekend.’ That’s not going to happen,” she said.

Her alternative is slower and more deliberate. She makes a running list of things she has ignored through the darker months, then works through it in short bursts when time allows.

“That’s sort of my ‘eat this elephant one bite at a time’ attitude to spring cleaning,” said Kolozetti.

The first move, she argues, is not picking up a mop. Clutter is the real obstacle. When countertops are clear and corners are not piled with books, there is simply less to move before cleaning can begin.

“Cleaning your house is so much easier when you don’t have a lot of stuff to work around,” she said.

But deciding what leaves the house is its own kind of hard. Objects carry memory, guilt and family history, and those decisions cannot be rushed. Professional organizers, Kolozetti included, often schedule client sessions just once a week for that reason.

“Decluttering and organizing is often a really emotional process as well. It’s not just a logistical one because you will come across things that you have to make an emotional decision over,” she said.

Push too hard, too fast, and people stop entirely.

“I won’t show up every day because they don’t have the emotional bandwidth to do it. It’s like trying to run a marathon every day,” said Kolozetti.

Once the decision to let something go is made, she urges people to donate before considering the Bridge Street dump.

“My thought is if it was good enough for you to keep in your house, it’s probably okay for it to be donated,” she said.

Local options include donation boxes, consignment shops for quality clothing, and a free Facebook group where items are offered at no cost to anyone who wants them. Kolozetti uses it herself, and says it removes the hassle of Marketplace negotiations and no-shows.

The SPCA on Jarvis Street accepts pet supplies including cat trees, bowls and bedding. Animal rescues across the region will also take old linens and towels, including sheets and blankets, regardless of age or pattern, because the animals are not particular about vintage baby blankets from the 80s.

Donors should always call ahead rather than arriving unannounced with a carload of goods.

“You are unburdening yourself by this donation, so just make sure it doesn’t become somebody else’s burden,” said Kolozetti.

A thorough declutter also changes how people shop afterward. Once the contents of every drawer and closet has been accounted for, the impulse to buy a black t-shirt you already own a dozen of weakens considerably.

“The really big benefit of doing a huge declutter is that then all of a sudden you become really good at not refilling the space you’ve worked so hard to clear,” she said.

Less buying means less that eventually heads to landfill.

“You’re just literally reducing your consumption and therefore reducing the amount of stuff that eventually will end up in landfill,” said Kolozetti.

With that foundation in place, she points to five specific areas that often get skipped during regular cleaning and build up quietly through winter. Each one takes real time, none of them are glamorous, and all five are almost certainly overdue.

1. BASEBOARDS

They run along every wall in the house, they are almost always white, and they collect everything: dust, pet hair, scuff marks and grime that becomes visible only when spring light starts cutting lower and sharper through the windows.

“Baseboards, the bane of my existence,” said Kolozetti.

A damp microfibre cloth works well for most baseboards. For households with dogs or cats, a dry sweep first helps pull hair away before it smears into the surface.

2. LIGHT FIXTURES

Overhead lights rarely get wiped down during routine cleaning, and most people do not notice how much dust has settled until they flip a fixture on and see it glowing faintly grey.

Glass globes and shades can usually be removed and washed in warm soapy water. Flush-mount fixtures often just need a cloth wipe-down. The job takes less than an hour for most rooms, and the difference in light quality is immediate.

3. WINDOW SCREENS

Window screens spend winter folded in a basement or garage collecting whatever was in the air last fall, and reinstalling them without cleaning first pushes that grime directly into the house the first time a breeze comes through. Or, if not taken down last fall, they’ve spent months collecting grime from seasonal weather.

Kolozetti considers it a two-day job, which is probably not an exaggeration for a full house clean.

Screens can be laid flat in a bathtub or taken outside and scrubbed gently with soapy water and a soft brush, then rinsed and left to dry fully before going back in the frames. Skipping this step means spending spring and summer looking at the yard through a film of last year’s pollen.

4. KITCHEN DRAWERS

Crumbs migrate into kitchen drawers in ways that seem to defy physics. The cutlery drawer, the utensil drawer, the miscellaneous drawer that has not been properly closed since October: all of them could stand to be emptied and wiped.

Kolozetti’s advice is to pull everything out, clean the drawer box itself, then reconsider whether everything going back in actually belongs there. The cleaning reveals what is expired, broken, duplicated or simply unnecessary, and the drawer functions better once it is not holding a set of four different incomplete measuring spoon collections.

5. DIGITAL CLUTTER

The fifth item on Kolozetti’s list doesn’t require a single cleaning utensil, but it carries the same accumulation problem. Old photos filling your phone’s storage, a cluttered desktop, and an inbox full of promotional emails from every retailer a person shopped with between Halloween and Christmas all create low-level friction that does not go away on its own.

She recommends unsubscribing from mailing lists–save and except Fort Erie Radio’s weekly newsletter–sorting and deleting photos, and organizing files on a computer desktop as part of the seasonal reset.

The principle is the same as clearing a closet: once the digital space is ordered, it is easier to maintain and harder to let slip back into chaos.

Kolozetti is a regular guest on Fort Erie Radio’s morning show. Anyone looking to work with a professional organizer can reach Simple Sanctuary Home Organization directly for rates and availability.

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