There’s something so refreshing about opening the windows on those first warm days of spring, letting the beauty of what’s to come breeze through. Spring cleaning is a great way to energize our homes for the new season. We can do an intentional “sweep” of our spaces to help reset and remove clutter, trash, and recycling—responsibly.
Sure, you’ll notice some stress relief with warmer days and longer sunlight hours, but do you know what will really lower your cortisol levels, help you sleep better, and make you feel more focused, productive, and calm? A tidier home.
And then there’s this shocking statistic: In an average home, getting rid of clutter eliminates 40% of housework, according to the National Soap and Detergent Association.
“Getting rid of clutter can eliminate 40% of housework, according to the National Soap and Detergent Association.”
The spring cleaning season is here, and Delaware has tons of local resources for donation and recycling to make it easy for you to…
- clear your home confidently and easily
- do good for the planet
- help your neighbors who need the very items you may no longer use, love, or want (pro tip: dust them off first!)
- and, if you have kids, model for them how to care for your belongings, your home, and the Earth by letting go of what no longer serves you.
According to Amanda Menasion at the Delaware Solid Waste Authority (DSWA), “Delaware ranks higher than the national level on the amount of recycling that’s happening. Our recycling diversion rate is 38% here in DE, so what that means [is] that’s the amount we are diverting from the landfill. It includes single stream, special recycling, electronics, etc., and the national average is about 32%, so we’re higher than national.”
Your Spring Cleaning Step-by-Step Plan
Let’s focus on categories, moving room by room and targeting only the items that fall under the description. We’re not saying don’t pull out anything else you see that’s recyclable or donatable, but keep the focus small so you stay on task and make significant progress accomplishing one concrete task at a time.
Recruit help—get your family involved, ask a neighbor for an extra set of hands, or call up a friend for body doubling. Even if you do all the heavy lifting and someone else mobilizes these items out of your house, that’s a huge relief. Don’t skip that step though; it’s not enough to gather up items for donation and recycling—you must move them out ASAP, and knowing where they’re headed in advance is key.
Decluttering is more manageable—and even fun—with help from a certified professional organizer® (a neutral, unbiased, third party with zero attachment to your things). You can schedule a free 30-minute discovery call with Kim Mazewski to share your goals and learn more about her offerings.
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GOAL: Load your car to drop off everything you can to Delaware Solid Waste Authority’s monthly event.
Do a whole-house pass to prep for the event and bring everything together in a holding space to load the car the evening before or morning of. Find an upcoming collection event near you online.
Mission #1: Corral all the hazardous household chemicals you no longer use, need, and want or that have expired.
Here are some common spots to locate these bad boys:
- Under the kitchen sink: aerosol cans with product still in them (if they are empty, it’s OK to toss into the trash), drain cleaners, floor wax, oven cleaner
- Bathroom: nail polish/removers, perfumes, toilet cleaners
- Laundry room: bleach, moth balls
- In the basement, shed, or garage: mercury thermometers, fluorescent light bulbs (hazardous if they break so handle with care), antifreeze, car batteries, degreasers, fungicides, herbicides, pesticides, pool chemicals, corrosives, oil-based paint, gas cylinders, solvents, stains, motor oils (at all locations), and filters
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Mission #2: It’s time to dig up your electronic graveyard.
Mazewski sees these in almost all of her clients’ homes: piles of old flip phones, outdated tech, unused (unneeded) TVs, mismatched wires, broken appliances, etc. During this step of spring cleaning, round up everything you can from large appliances (microwaves, printers, box TVs) to the little things (calculators, electronics toys, pagers).
Where your electronic clutter typically hides:
- Junk drawers
- Kitchen cabinets or the pantry
- Kids’ play spaces or bedrooms (Their electronic toys, if broken, are perfect for recycling; if they’re no longer in use but in good shape, donate.)
- Bedrooms (especially under the bed, in closets, or stuffed in a bag in the bottom of a pile)
- Home offices
- Basements
Worried about private information on those old drives? Menasion assures, “We partner with Sycamore International to ensure confidential information is secure; the first thing that happens is that anything with data is erased. The hard drives are shredded, [then] newer devices can be refurbished to be sold.”
Pro tip: You can also safely and securely recycle electronics with the local and Black-owned organization NERDit NOW.
Mission #3: Tackle everyone’s least favorite: papers.
Collect all the papers from the piles you’ve accumulated, the “deal with it later” stash, the doom bins, and the collection of your little artists’ doodles. Do a quick sort to pull out anything you obviously don’t need that can be shredded. Up for a challenge? Remove outdated or obsolete items from your filing cabinet. You can fill two boxes (a good size reference is a file box), which will be shredded on-site and recycled.
That being said, why stop at two boxes? If you have more, keep filling those boxes. You can bring more next month, you can burn them in a campfire, or you can bring them to Staples, which offers secure shredding (pay per pound). Keep that momentum going and plow through your papers. You really don’t need to save as much as you think.
Mission #4:Take care of all the extras.
This includes:
- Batteries
- Styrofoam
- Those excess and gigantic cardboard boxes sitting in the garage
- Books (the ones that no one really wants or needs anymore, like old encyclopedias, outdated travel guides, and early editions of books that are more current now). DSWA has a pilot program with BookDrop. You can drop off paperback and hard cover books to be recycled into raw materials; newer ones may be resold.
- If your home repairs are done but your house still looks like a construction zone, getting rid of construction and demolition (C&D) waste such as wood, drywall, metal, carpet, etc. is completed by Revolution Recovery. They charge a tipping fee to recycle these items above. Call 302-356-3000 before you go.
Once you assign everything a “home” in your house that everyone’s on board with, it’s obvious when something is out of place, and it’s a quick relocate to tidy up. Break up rooms into functional zones, storing items of similar categories together in a way that is intuitive to how you actually use the space. Containers serve as boundaries—if it’s overflowing, that’s your cue to edit. Don’t forget to label everything and fine-tune as needed.
Specialty Recycling
- Eyeglasses/hearing aides: Lion’s Club International (A go-to spot is the PNC Bank at 4725 Kirkwood Highway in Wilmington.)
- Donate unexpired food items to Food Bank of Delaware, little free pantries, or local churches/shelters.
- Prescription medications: Safely discard your medications at one of these convenient drop-off locations.
- Plastic bags: Wegmans, Acme, Food Lion, Giant, Kohl’s, Sprouts
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GOAL: Declutter and donate clothes, toys, and household items to a minority-women-owned nonprofit like Phoenix Used Clothing or Forget Me Not Families.
Once you’ve successfully moved out all of the items for trash and recycling, it’s time to make a serious impact in your home (and the community) with mindful decluttering.
Pro Tip: If you’re not sure where to start, check out our expert guide to decluttering.
Phoenix Used Clothing has convenient drop boxes throughout New Castle and Kent Counties. To donate everything and everything, head to the main site at 132 Sandy Drive in Newark. It also accepts hangers and offers free textile recycling—anything overly loved, stained, holey, or mismatched.
BONUS: Find a drop box near another charity you like.
- Example #1: One of the drop boxes is located right at the Delaware Humane Animal Partners in Newark, so double your donation by dropping off a bag of blankets, towels, and animal supplies in the front and your Phoenix bags around back.
- Example #2: A new box is right next to the Prices Corner Habitat for Humanity Restore, so take your clothes and textiles recycling along with your household/tools donation.
Move again through categories. Do one category or do them all. If going through all your clothes feels daunting, break it down into subcategories. For example, sort through your jeans/work pants and see what you can donate.
Not overwhelmed and want more from your spring cleaning efforts? Go further into your closet to tackle shoes and accessories like purses, scarves, and jewelry.
Mission #1: Clothes
Be honest with yourself about what you wear and what you don’t. Why do clothes still have tags on them? If you’re not wearing it now or haven’t worn it in the past six months or longer, let it go. If you don’t truly feel good in it when you sit down, reach overhead for something, or pick something off the floor, let it go.
Mission #2: Household Items
You can do a deep dive here, or just a quick surface-level check.
What they accept: bedding, table linens, luggage/travel bags, curtains, kitchen appliances, dishes/glassware, utensils, picture frames, decor, durable medical equipment, baby gear
Mission #3: Do a pass of all your kids’ clothes
Pull out anything overly loved or ripped/stained (for textiles recycling) as well as outgrown sizes. You know what your kids actually wear versus what you wish they would wear. The same goes for themes, characters, or phases they’re over (think: mermaids, Paw Patrol, etc.). It’s okay to let those go with gratitude.
Pro tip: This can be a tough one for parents, but it’s worth it. Instead of Spiderman bedsheets with a Batman area rug and an Avengers lampshade, opt for neutral colors and patterns. Neutrals will last way longer and grow with children into teenage years. This doesn’t mean a room void of personality or interests; sprinkle that in with stuffed animals, Lego displays, and art on the walls.
Mission #4: Sort through children’s toys and games.
- If it’s broken, missing pieces, or no longer functional, pull out what you can for recycling and toss the rest.
- If it’s something you swore your kid would love but they just never got into it, it’s okay to let it go.
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After Spring Cleaning: How to Maintain & Move Forward With Intention
Now that you’ve worked your way through your home, you should have a better awareness of your inventory. Be mindful moving forward. Review your auto-subscriptions, set boundaries around purchases and gifts, prioritize experiences over stuff, and focus on quality over quantity.
To maintain your tidier home, try the one in, one out rule or, if you’re up for a challenge, for every purchase shipped to you, fill the bag or box with items to donate (one in, ten out!).
“Normalize decluttering as an everyday practice, not this kind of intense spring cleaning ritual only.”
Normalize decluttering as an everyday practice, not this kind of intense spring cleaning ritual only. Having an “outbox” by the door, in the mudroom, or in a central place for the family serves as a visual reminder to add that sweater that didn’t quite fit, that toy your child has outgrown, or the book your partner just finished. The trick is to keep your eyes open—it’s far too easy to become blind to clutter when you see it every day.
A nightly reset of even 10-15 minutes is such a beautiful gift you can give to your tomorrow self. Even running the dishwasher, throwing the clothes into the dryer, or putting the toys away keeps things moving forward and prevents that overwhelm.
Your Call to Action
Remember, mobilizing clutter is the best and fastest way to make significant progress in your home’s organization. Even small steps add up quickly. Do what you can to make it a family affair, make it fun, make your sessions short and sweet and consistent, and relish in the space.
Don’t forget about your local Buy Nothing group, neighborhood moms’ groups, or even curb alerts to quickly move out items to people who’ll happily come collect.
If you have questions about recycling during your spring cleaning journey, resources are available to help. DNREC offers Recyclopedia, which to Menasion is a “good tool to use if you are unsure of whether an item is trash or recycling; type it in and you’ll see options and locations for correct disposal.” Be thoughtful to help neighbors or friends who may need help with the heavy lifting, with driving their items to the recycling centers, or with the online work of scheduling a pickup for donation. That’s good karma that’ll come back to you!
Spring cleaning is more manageable—and even fun—with help from a certified professional organizer® (a neutral, unbiased, third party with zero attachment to your things). You can schedule a free 30-minute discovery call with Kim Mazewski to share your goals here and learn more about her offerings here.
