Spring Cleaning With Fresh Eyes
By Sue Pendleton, Founder
When most of us think about spring cleaning, we think about closets, drawers, cabinets, and the satisfying act of getting rid of what has piled up. And I do love that kind of reset. But the kind of spring cleaning I find myself drawn to most is a little different. It’s less about purging and more about reassessing.
Every spring, I find myself looking around the house with fresh eyes and asking questions like:
Is this functioning as it should?
Does this still fit our lifestyle today?
What has changed since we set this up this way?
That last question is usually the one that opens everything up. Because often nothing is technically wrong. Nothing is broken. Nothing is an obvious disaster. And yet, something no longer makes sense.
It is always surprising to me how easy it is to walk by something a thousand times without really seeing it. Then one day, after taking the time to look more carefully, it suddenly becomes obvious: this no longer fits the way we live now.
And once I see that, I can’t unsee it.
This kind of reassessment has always felt natural to me
I have always been the person to say, “I know we’ve always done it this way, but can we take another look?”
For a long time, I think I experienced that as a kind of restlessness.
Why can’t I just leave well enough alone?
Why do I keep questioning the setup?
Why am I always noticing what could work better?
But over time, especially as I have thought more deeply about creative minds, I have come to see this differently. I think creative minds are often especially good at reassessing.
We notice friction.
Sense when something is off.
Question assumptions.
Imagine alternatives.
See that something can technically be working, but it may no longer be the best fit.
That can sometimes look like dissatisfaction. But I think it can also be a real strength. It’s not about the need to learn how to reassess, but where to aim that instinct.
And spring feels like a very good time to do exactly that.
Not broken. But it no longer fits.
I understand the value of “don’t fix what ain’t broke.” There is wisdom in avoiding unnecessary chaos and appreciating what works. But I also think people can get complacent about the status quo.
We get used to what’s familiar. We stop questioning systems, routines, and spaces that may have made perfect sense once, but no longer reflect the life or work we have now. That’s why I think a better spring cleaning question is not: What should I get rid of? It’s: What’s changed since I started doing this this way?
Lifestyle
Work
Goals
Energy
Tools
Priorities
Seasons of life
If we don’t stop to reassess, we can end up organizing our lives around outdated assumptions.
“Still works” is not the same as “still fits.”
One of the best examples came from my old job
There was a moment in my former career that comes back to me often when I think about this.
One of the client management people retired. It was a big loss. She was truly excellent at what she did, and the others on her team were equally impressive. Naturally, everyone assumed the answer was simple: we would replace her.
That made sense on the surface.
But for some reason, I started wondering whether that was really the best answer.
At the time, I had a team of creatives and a team of client people. Both groups had been voicing frustrations about managing projects and, especially, how they were being closed out. Their complaints were different in some ways, but there was enough overlap that it caught my attention.
I began to wonder: if we could solve some of these underlying issues, would that actually do more for the team than trying to replace someone whose particular combination of talent and experience did not really exist?
That question changed everything.
Instead of automatically filling the vacancy, we looked more closely at the actual friction points. We talked about where things were bogging down. We thought about the needs of the analytical brains on the team and the super creative brains, and how both were being slowed down in different ways by similar problems.
What we realized was that if we could create better systems around those pain points, everyone might be able to take on more projects while spending more of their time doing what they did best.
So that’s what we did.
We hired a woman who became absolutely essential to the team. She created systems and processes that worked for both the analytical and creative minds in the group, and the improvement to our workflows was significant.
The team did not just survive the loss. In many ways, it functioned better because we had taken the time to reassess what was really needed.
That experience stayed with me.
Sometimes the obvious solution is only obvious because it follows the old pattern. But sometimes the better solution only appears after you stop and ask what’s changed.
Spring is a good time to ask questions
I think this is one of the gifts of spring. It naturally invites us to refresh, reset, and look again. Not just in our closets and drawers, but in our habits, systems, spaces, and assumptions.
For artists and creative people, that can mean asking:
Does my studio still work for the kind of art I am making now?
Does the way I market myself still fit my goals today?
Does this routine support me, or am I just doing it because I always have?
Am I tolerating friction somewhere simply because it has become familiar?
What has changed while I kept doing things the same way?
These are such useful questions. Because the answer may not be that you need to do more. You may need to shift something. Rearrange. Let go. Rethink. Build a better support around what you need now.
Creative minds often know this before they know they know it
This kind of spring cleaning can feel especially familiar to creative people. Creative minds are often already scanning for what no longer fits. We are the ones who notice that something feels clunky. We are often the ones asking whether there is a better way, a more natural flow, a more elegant system, a truer fit.
Sometimes that instinct can feel inconvenient. Or make us seem like the person who’s always poking at the status quo. But I don’t think that’s necessarily a flaw. I think it may be one of the ways creative minds help things evolve. The important thing is to use that instinct intentionally.
Not to create change for its own sake. Or endlessly reinvent everything. But to pause long enough to ask whether the current setup still belongs in our current life.
A different kind of spring cleaning
So this spring, I am less interested in asking, “What should I clean out?” I am more interested in asking:
What no longer fits?
What am I doing out of habit?
Where has life changed without the system changing with it?
What am I walking past every day that no longer makes sense?
That feels like a more meaningful kind of spring cleaning to me. Not just tidying and decluttering. But seeing clearly again. Sometimes the smartest shift is not adding something new. It’s simply recognizing that an old setup belongs to an older version of your life.
And sometimes the most creative thing we can do is take another look.
