Spring Cleaning to New Beginnings

SPRING CLEANING

WRITTEN BY KAELEIGH JAMES DESIGNER ALLYSSA OGAARD

MODELS JAMIE YEUNG

& KENNY PARK

The Cambridge Dictionary defines the term “spring-cleaning” as “the act of cleaning all of a place, especially your house, very well, including parts you do not often clean.” While this still applies in 2021, I’d argue the cleaning we’re doing this spring goes a bit deeper.

The spring cleaning frenzy that occurs every year right around daylight saving time is like the human version of waking up from hibernation. You’ve been trapped inside for countless months, passing the many dark hours in a fog of fatigue that when the sun starts to show a bit longer each day, an instinct inside you is triggered. All of a sudden you’re cleaning your bathroom, organizing your pantry, getting rid of old clothes, and hanging those pictures on the wall that have been lying on your floor waiting for you to pick up some tape for, well...we won’t get into how long. Life starts to look a little brighter, in more ways than one.

If you look back to Spring 2020, the world started to shut down right when our instinct to spring clean typically kicks in. I’d argue it came on even more aggressive than usual with people stuck at home day in and day out. The hours of staring at the confines and contents of our homes became maddening, and led to things being thrown out at incredible rates, often left at the ends of driveways with dingy “free” signs unceremoniously taped to them.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY ILKA SANKARI ART DIRECTOR OLIVIA CROOKER

To New Beginnings

When the pandemic didn’t let up and people couldn’t transition to their summer routine, spring cleaning turned to making banana bread and learning how to sew.

Now, here we are in Spring of 2021 with one essential difference from last year, the arrival of our dear friends Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson. With the vaccine rollout, going out and socializing is becoming more of a reality again. But after more than a year at home, it won’t be a smooth transition for all. The thought of reentering a new post-COVID society can be scary which is why this year, we’ve got to turn our spring cleaning inward too. You’ve had one year to reconnect with yourself, and now it’s time to figure out whom you want to be to everyone else. Now, while you clean out and color code your closet for the 5th time in the past 12 months, here are some questions to ask yourself as you prepare to walk out your front door and into a new reality: 1. I am deserving of love and respect from all I encounter.

Which relationships in my life are serving me and worth offering my energy? 2. Who and what deserves my presence, skills and everything

I offer the world? 3. What do I need more of in my life and what do I need less of? 4. What parts of myself am I willing and prepared to offer to my surroundings, and what do I need to protect for myself and my wellbeing? 5. What are my intentions, needs, and goals as I prepare to re-integrate into the outside world? Am I prepared to defend them as needed?

The pre-pandemic you is gone, as you brace yourself to reenter the world, I ask you to consider, who are you now?