With the warmer weather arriving, the snow melting and other signs of spring cropping up, I can feel spring fever in the air.

This is the time of year that many women are feeling the need to spring clean, declutter and organize their house. Away go the winter clothes and in come the summer ones.

Unfortunately, feeling the need to get your house in order is then followed by a sense of overwhelm and thinking “But where do I begin?”. Well, I asked Elaine Shannon, professional organizer and time management expert, for some advice to get us started.

Here are some first-timer tips from Elaine on spring DE-Cluttering.

• Tackle one room or closet at a time, the feeling of accomplishment in that one area will take you a long way to completing a whole house.

• Label several containers. Garbage, Recycling, Donation (Yard Sale), misplaced items, things that belong to other people. Set up the containers in the room and sort each item as you go. Make an immediate decision. Notice you do not have a container labelled “I’ll deal with that later”.

• Stay focused. You can only deal with one thing at a time. Don’t get distracted by the shiny object across the room. Start in one corner and work your way around the room. Before you know it, you will have addressed every item in the room.

• Lastly, deal with all the items in your containers. Give them all a home. From this point onward it should take less than 5 seconds to put your hands on any item in this room. Now stand back and admire your work, it will inspire you before moving on to the next project.

By the time the nice weather arrives you’ll be ready to get out and enjoy it!