Spring is in the air.
Birds are chirping, the last remnants of the blizzard are melting, and people are finally opening up their windows to air out the winter dust that has settled around them. Spring is a time of growth and renewal. This year instead of your house, try to spring clean your life.
Have you ever scrolled through your Facebook feed and rolled your eyes at someone’s 5,896th picture of their meal, kid, pet, etc. and asked yourself why are you still friends?
Do these people add value to your life?
Furthermore, can you honestly say you legitimately know everyone that you are friends with? This spring, try to declutter your friends list. If you have people who are constantly posting statuses saying “if you’re my friend copy and post this status for an hour if you love and support (insert cause here)” but you have never had any actual interaction with them, why are you continuing this friendship?
So what prompted the cleaning? I recently had dinner with a girlfriend and someone approached our table and started asking me all of these really personal questions about my private life. I had no clue who they were so I answered cautiously.
Since my poker face is about as good as a 3-year-old’s, she quickly caught on to the fact that I had no idea who she was. She said “oh you know me, we’re friends on Facebook. My deer in headlights look gave away the fact that I had likely hidden her from my feed as I asked where we knew each other from in real life and neither of us could remember. It was then that I decided instead of just hiding people, I needed to make a clean sweep.
The sweep didn’t stop there, I went through my phone and deleted old contacts that I had acquired throughout the years. Certainly there was no real use for my ex best friend’s cousin’s ex-boyfriend from 8 years ago to still be a contact and stealing precious memory space on my phone. I was amazed at how many useless things I had held on to over the years. It was my own personal intervention; I was a random people hoarder.
So I deleted.
It was like a cleanse for the soul to declutter my life of all the names and faces. The spring cleaning isn’t going to stop there. I suppose that next I will move onto my house and the mess within, but I can proudly say that this year I spring cleaned my contact list and that is a bigger accomplishment than finally going through the mountain of unmatched socks in my laundry room.
Maybe I will get to those next weekend — or next spring.
