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Spring Cleaning in the Dead of Winter

Easy ways to clean the home and create more storage

CLEARFIELD, Utah, Feb. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Most people consider spring the perfect time to clean and organize the home, but since the cold February air forces people to spend more time indoors, why not spring clean during winter instead? If you can get your cleaning done now, then when the weather turns warm, you can actually go outside and enjoy it instead of going through boxes and organizing storage areas. Here are a few tips to help you spring clean in the middle of winter:

Reward yourself -- Organizing the home can be tedious. To lower the bore factor, choose a few TV shows or CDs that you love and only let yourself watch or listen when you're cleaning. That way, you'll have an inherent reward built into these tasks and you may even find yourself looking forward to them.

Evaluate seasonal items -- Much of your storage space is probably filled with things you only use a couple months out of the year. Take stock of these items and pare down -- if you use the same three boxes of holiday decorations every year, don't save the other two boxes you never open. Does your family really need six beach balls? You'd be surprised at the amount of storage space you can recover by tossing duplicate or excess items you never look at or may not know you have.

Make space outside -- During warmer seasons, patio furniture, grilling equipment and outdoor toys can stay comfortably outside, but the winter cold and precipitation can really do them damage. To preserve outdoor accessories for warmer seasons to come, store them in an outdoor storage shed from Lifetime Products. These lockable, weather-resistant sheds will protect items from weather and intruders alike.

If it's broke -- If you've done a thorough cleaning, you've probably unearthed some broken items. The inclination may be to hang onto these things because, "I can fix that in two seconds," but most people never actually do. If that sounds like you, place a sticky note with the date onto anything that you plan to fix. If that sticky note is still staring up at you from the broken item one month from now, you didn't really need it anyway, so get rid of it.

One in, one out -- If you've taken the time to really clean and organize your home, the last thing you want to do is stare at new piles of junk two months from now. If you have a tendency to hoard things, make a rule that for every new item you bring into your space, something else has to go. This will keep junk collection to a minimum and may even save you money, because if you're not willing to part with something you can't buy anything new.

For more tips on home organization or information about Outdoor Storage Sheds from Lifetime Products, visit www.lifetime.com.

Lifetime Products, Inc. is a registered trademark and not associated with Lifetime Television. For more information on folding tables and chairs from Lifetime Products, visit www.Lifetime.com.

SOURCE Lifetime Products, Inc.