Virgo is known for being organized, tidy, and meticulous. She is scrupulous and methodical — what better energy to invoke to clean your house?
Virgo season is also the last month before the start of the dark half of the year which begins at the Autumnal equinox on Sept. 22 and ends at the Spring equinox on March 20, 2019 (in the northern hemisphere). Mabon and Samhain fall during this time, which are the last two harvests of the year. Then comes Winter followed by the anticipation of Spring. While we are probably more familiar with the idea of “Spring Cleaning,” I think it’s also a great idea to do some “Fall Cleaning” to prepare for the dark months of fall and winter. To do this, I’ve created a way to prioritize the areas of your home and a method in which clean which will hopefully be less overwhelming than other websites that tell you how to deep clean a room from top to bottom.
Separate your home into areas. Each section is typically considered a room, but for some open floor plans and big rooms, one room might have more than one area. Write down each area on a sheet of paper (or whatever). Visit each area and rate each area and provide a rating for each of the factors below. We will apply a little math magick and use these ratings to prioritize the work that needs to be done over the next couple weeks.
- How important is it that this area be clean? Your reasons are your own. It could important that an area is clean because that’s where your children play or it’s where you eat your food. A 1 is not important at all and 5 is extremely important.
- How many hours do you think it will take to get the area as clean as you want it to be? This doesn’t need to be a whole number, .5 is a half hour, 2.75 is two and three-quarter hours.
- How overwhelmed do you feel just thinking about starting to clean this area? Do you feel excited to tackle it, or does the thought make you want to do anything else? A 1 is you are not overwhelmed at all and a 5 is you are extremely overwhelmed.
Now, for each area, take the number you wrote down for importance and multiply it by the number of hours you think it’ll take to clean the area. Then, take that number and divide it by your overwhelmed rating. Finally, rewrite your list with the area with the largest number on top and subsequent areas in descending order. If you have a tie, just put the area you would rather tackle first.
Here are examples for my home:
Room: (Importance*Hours)/Overwhelmed=Score
Meditation room: (4*4)/1=16
Kitchen: (5*2)/2=5
Bathroom: (5*3)/4=3.75
Living room: (4*2)/4=2
Bedroom:(4*1)/2=2
Closet: (2*3)*5=1.2
Look at your list. How does it feel? The idea behind the calculation is to give you a prioritized list that factors in the importance of the area that needs to be cleaned but takes into consideration the feeling of being overwhelmed. I want you to be able to tackle as much as you can in this challenge and feeling overwhelmed at the start will not help you get through anything. You are in ultimate control here, so feel free to move areas around and prioritize in a way that makes the most sense to you!
My list feels pretty good to me. Sure cleaning the kitchen and bathroom are more important, but I’ll be a little more excited to tackle re-organizing my meditation area. And once I’m done with that, and feel good about the progress I’ve made, I’ll be a little more excited and less overwhelmed to start on the bathroom (…right?).
Having a prioritized list will also help us get some areas cleaned without the added pressure of feeling like we need to do EVERYTHING. Life happens, physical energy ebbs and flows, and it’s perfectly fine if we can’t get through every single area in our home during this challenge. Spend the time where it matters and leave other areas to tackle another time. The idea is to do what we can, not make ourselves feel bad for not being able to do everything we wanted to do at the start.
We will split up our serious cleaning into two phases: light and deep which correspond to the waning Moon phases.
Week 1 begins with a Full Moon and we will use this energy to go through each area of our home in the order we have prioritized performing the following activities:
- Removing clutter, unused/old/broken objects.
- Placing the above objects into separate piles: donate, sell, and trash. The “sell” pile is optional. Be very realistic about whether or not you will actually do the work to sell the items or not. I rarely have a “sell” pile because I know that I will never get around to putting the energy into creating a post for the items I have to sell and they will forever sit in a pile in my closet. So, I will just donate those items. Some people are really great at doing this, and the more power to them!
- Do any light cleaning that can be done without doing a deep clean, like dusting, organizing, spot treating, washing walls, sweeping, etc.
You have a full 7 days to go through each of the areas in your home, so split up the tasks and spread them out if that is helpful for you.
Week 2 will be dedicated to the deep cleaning of these areas.
- Scrub floors, counters, fixtures, showers, and tubs.
- Check and clean/replace filters.
- Wash the floors.
- Clean/dust window coverings.
- Clean the hard to reach areas like under/behind the refrigerator and heavy furniture and get those awkward corners in the living room.
- Clean appliances like the microwave, oven, television, electronic equipment, etc.
- Vacuum again as needed.
You have a full 7 days to go through each of the areas in your home, so split up the tasks and spread them out if that is helpful for you. Try to get as much as you can cleared and out of the door by end of the day Sat. Sept. 8 or early morning Sun. Sept. 9. The New Moon in Virgo will be at 11:02 a.m. PDT and we’ll use the energy of the waxing moon during the final 2 weeks of the challenge.
Week 3 is about organizing what we have left. Spend time this week doing some of the following activities:
- Organizing drawers and closets, including refolding clothing and linens, matching up storage containers with their lids, and putting things that get used the most in places that are easiest to access.
- Putting items that you want to save into boxes, bins, and baskets.
- Storing important documents in file folders in appropriate containers and shredding documents you no longer need.
- Hang any art, photos, etc. that have been awaiting wall space.
- Fix anything that you can repair yourself or replace the item(s).
Keep a list of anything you might need to buy to help you organize, such as smaller containers to separate objects in drawers and bins to keep files. At the end of the week, after you have gone through each of the areas in your home, take your list and prioritize anything that you need to buy since bins, baskets, and other items can be pricey.
Week 4 is about making everything pretty! By now, everything should be clean and organized. Do any necessary tidying up and make sure everything that is in view is nice and neat. Spend this time adding some extra love to each of the areas of your home. Some ideas:
- Add a bouquet (or 2 or 3) of flowers.
- Burn incense, candles or use an oil diffuser to add some smells that make you comfortable and happy.
- Cleanse your space using sage, cedar, mugwort, or the dried herb of your choice.
- Put on some music that makes you want to dance and move through each room of your house.
- Celebrate all the hard work you have put into your home and cherish the feeling of accomplishment. Even if you didn’t get to check off every single item on your list, or were only able to do 1 thing, acknowledge that you did something to make your home a more beautiful place!
Post your progress shots on Instagram with #virgoclean if you’d like to show off your progress!
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