Spring Clean Your Life: Six Writers Share Their Seasonal Reset Strategies
Spring isn't just about tidying your home. It's an opportunity for a comprehensive life refresh. From sleep routines and beauty resets to detoxing your wardrobe, finances, and digital life, six writers from The Independent reveal how they're making space for a fresher, lighter season. Here's how you can transform the traditional spring clean into a holistic lifestyle overhaul.
Victoria Young: A Sleep Reset
With the clocks changed and winter's gloom lifting, it's time for a sleep reset. Victoria Young is saying goodbye to cosy hibernation patterns and embracing two major changes based on sleep expert advice she'd previously ignored. First, she's going outside into sunshine or daylight immediately after waking to alert her circadian rhythms that the day has begun. This exposure to natural light early regulates the body's "sleep clock" and triggers melatonin production, making it easier to fall and stay asleep at night.
The second change involves eliminating alcohol during weekdays. While evening wine might seem appealing during dark months, she's discovered that sipping nighttime tea before bed leads to deeper, more restorative slumber. Dreams become more vivid, and she awakens feeling genuinely well-rested. Additional sleep sanctuary enhancements include freshly laundered sheets and pyjamas, magnesium butter massaged into feet before bed, and lavender pillow spray. She's also started going to bed earlier to enjoy her bedtime routine, reading on a Kindle rather than her phone to avoid blue light disruption.
Radhika Sanghani: Detoxifying My Home
Radhika Sanghani's spring cleaning focuses on detoxification. After previous years targeting ultra-processed foods and alcohol, this year she's addressing microplastics and everyday toxins in her home. Scientific research showing how plastics absorb into food when heated, along with concerns about endocrine disruptors like phthalates in personal care products and "forever chemicals" in clothing, has motivated this comprehensive approach.
Her plan involves eliminating plastic from the kitchen, removing synthetic fragrances including perfumes, and discarding clothing containing harmful chemicals. She's gradually replacing these with natural alternatives like organic Soil Association-certified personal care products and natural clothing. While acknowledging this isn't cheap, she's adopting a slow process: throwing away something toxic each time she treats herself to something new, gradually detoxifying both her home and herself.
Sam Fishwick: A Spring Clean on Spending
Every April, Sam Fishwick conducts a "Financial Spring Cleaning" using an Excel spreadsheet where he enters every transaction from the past six months. He colour-codes them: green for "fine," orange for "hmmm," red for "what were you thinking?!" and purple (whose meaning he can never remember). This process reveals patterns like weekly £1.99 payments to M&S for pork pies or forgotten Amazon Prime subscriptions.
While he admits to only half-balancing the books and typically abandoning the system after a few months, this financial audit helps steady his pennies, save money, and entertain his wife with optimistic holiday projections. The exercise provides valuable insight into spending habits that often go unnoticed during daily life.
Victoria Harper: Getting a Spring Glow-up
Self-described beauty slacker Victoria Harper only commits to serious beauty routines twice yearly: summer for pedicures and spring for deep facials to scrub away dull winter skin. This year, she's embracing the "glassy skin" trend inspired by Korean beauty routines that promise ultra-smooth, poreless, deeply hydrated skin with an almost reflective quality.
She visited The Beauty Edit in Mayfair for their K-Beauty Signature Facial, known for curated K-beauty brands like Medicube and Joseon, plus ethical, natural, hydrating ingredients. The 90-minute treatment provided mindful rejuvenation, leaving her skin looking fresh and polished. While she promised her facialist she'd maintain the results with SPF, scrubs, rollers, and hydration, she admits her box of Vida Glow marine collagen sachets remains unopened—proving once a beauty slacker, always a beauty slacker.
Katie Rosseinsky: Turning the Page on Your Book Collection
Katie Rosseinsky's one-bed flat has become a live-in library, with stacks of novels covering every surface and bargain bookcases straining under years of hardbacks. As someone who works from home, she needs clearer space for focus, so her Easter goal is rationalising this sprawling collection.
She's adopting a pseudo-Marie Kondo approach, asking two key questions: for books she's read, would she read them again? For unread books, is she likely to ever read them? A 600-page biography of novelist Richard Yates that's moved with her for six years without being opened seems destined for departure. Books she didn't enjoy but might appeal to friends will be offered first, then sold via charity shops, Vinted, or apps like World of Books, WeBuyBooks and Zapper that provide estimates for scanned barcodes. She acknowledges she'll likely use the freed space for new books, proving herself incorrigible.
Charlotte Cripps: Giving Old Threads a Second Life
As cherry blossoms bloom each April, Charlotte Cripps feels the urge to throw everything out and start afresh. But with economic pressures from ongoing conflicts, soaring petrol prices, energy bills, and mortgage hikes, she's turning spring cleaning into a money-making opportunity using Vinted.
She's culling her children's old clothes, including Mini Rodini leggings (even with holes) that sell quickly for £10, plus Zara and H&M tops, sweaters, coats, and fancy dress costumes. The process brings nostalgia—remembering pink Barbie shorts or Frozen princess dresses—and sadness when packaging up items like Liberty print dresses. But watching her Vinted balance grow and withdrawing cash provides satisfaction. Most importantly, she's created physical and energetic space in her two-bed flat, feeling uplifted and ready to move forward.
Lydia Spencer-Elliott: A Digital Cleanse
Self-described e-hoarder Lydia Spencer-Elliott has over 40,000 photos on her phone, preserved messages from ex-boyfriends, and archived uncomfortable WhatsApp conversations. This spring, she's embarking on a digital cleanse to shake off her cyber-baggage.
This process addresses both practical concerns like low storage warnings and emotional burdens like archive notifications from people she shouldn't be talking to. She argues you wouldn't carry letters from former lovers in your back pocket, so there's no need to cart them digitally either.
For photos, she uses a tiered removal process: 99.99% of screenshots are unnecessary, while memories require more consideration. She started by deleting duplicates, then decided which images truly sparked joy (like a sunny Devon trip with school friends) versus those that felt like picking scabs on healing wounds. Applying Marie Kondo's question—"Does it spark joy?"—she sent joyless images to permanent deletion, emerging lighter without hauling her past around.
