This time of year, when you live north of the Mason-Dixon, you’re itching to get outdoors and enjoy the warming weather; however, when the weather starts to warm up, it usually signals a time you need to roll up your sleeves and start your spring clean.

The annual purge of household items can have both physical and mental benefits . Clutter around the household can cost us valuable time looking for lost or misplaced items and de-cluttering has been linked to good mental health.

To assist you in this annual ritual, here are five considerations to account for when tackling your spring cleaning project.

What Will You Toss and What Will You Keep?

It’s understandable that it can be hard to trash sentimental items. To make these decisions easier, it’s suggested to create three piles as you sort your clutter: Keep, Donate, or Toss.

If you find the keep pile is heavily outweighing the other two, it may force you to be more strict on the guidelines on what you classify as a keeper. Remember, the end benefit of a decluttered home will provide mental relief that will be far more beneficial than that copy of TV Guide from 1998. For the donate pile, you’ll have plenty of options to donate items to including Salvation Army and your local Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

Declutter One Room at a Time

The easiest way to stay on task is to start and complete de-cluttering one room at a time. This assures you’ll be thorough in your spring cleaning project. If you have kids, it’s more important to go through their rooms with a fine-tooth comb; you’ll be sure to discover toys from Happy Meals that haven’t been played with in three or four years.

Stop — Don’t Shop

Often, those batteries you’re buying at Sam’s Club are unnecessary because you simply can’t find the unopened, dust-collecting box you purchased a year ago. If you’re ever certain you have a specific item in your household but can’t find it, it is due time you get serious about organizing your home. The time spent on your spring clean will pay for itself. Once you finish the project and your home is organized, it will stop the doubling or even tripling up on items that have already been purchased

Always Start With the Floor Near the Door:

Your first question you will pose to yourself is, “where do I begin?” It’s suggested to clear the floor by the doorway because once that’s organized the room will be safer to walk through and you can get to the pieces of furniture much easier. Plus, this provides you extra motivation as you instantly start to see progress.

This method gives you a systematic approach to organization that will make the daunting task seem easier.

Rent a Dumpster

The organization of your spring clean is time-consuming enough, taking frequent trips to the landfill to dispose of your waste is not valuing your time. Often, the easier and most-efficient solution is to rent a dumpster. Your local dumpster service will drop off a dumpster on your driveway, you will fill it up and then they will come to pick it up and dump it at the landfill/transfer station for you.

Kurt Anderson has been a Franchise Operator with Bin There Dump That for six years in the Metro Atlanta Area where he assists residents with dumpsters rentals for spring cleaning projects every year. He lives with his wife and three children in Dallas Georgia.