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Are you busy creating your spring cleaning checklist for 2017? If not, you had better get to it! Springtime will be here before you know it, and if you want to keep those New Year’s organizing resolutions, it will need to start now with a plan.

One of the best spring cleaning tips I can give you is to focus on more than just cleaning this year. It takes a longer time to declutter and organize your home while you are cleaning, but you will get a lot more accomplished. Think about it. In order to declutter and organize, you have to pull everything out of your closet and off your shelves anyway, right? Since you are doing that to clean house, why not take advantage and kill three birds with one stone?

I want to give you a quick spring cleaning decluttering checklist you can use to get rid of unnecessary items throughout your house.

• In the kitchen: Have any dishes or food storage containers that you don’t use? There is no reason to keep around a lot of kitchen clutter which isn’t actually serving you. You probably know people who could use your unused items—or you can thrift them. Check to see if you have mismatched food storage containers and lids while you are at it. Clean out your fridge and freezer and throw away expired items.

• In the bathrooms: Go through your cabinets and look for expired products (especially medications). Toss them out. Check to see if you have any empty bottles of cleaning agents or soaps. Get rid of everything that is cluttering your drawers and cabinets.

• In the bedrooms: The biggest chore here is usually to clean out your closets and thrift old clothes and other items you no longer need. Go through drawers as well and check through books to see if you have any other items that someone else could use which you no longer want.

• In the office: Go through all your papers and shred those which are no longer needed in your records. Make sure that everything else is either thrown away or filed as necessary. Get rid of any office supplies that no longer work (e.g. pens that have run out of ink). Check to make sure you have everything you do need (canned air for example).

• In the garage: Depending on what you keep in your garage, there could be a great deal here that you could donate or throw away—or sort and store where it belongs. Oftentimes, broken items wind up in the garage. Figure out what you are actually planning on fixing and schedule it. For the rest, recycle as you need to.

Decluttering your home is a lot of work, but it will actually be less work if you tackle it at the same time as your spring cleaning chores. This year make the decision to do both at the same time. Yes, that may mean that spring cleaning takes a few months instead of a few weeks, but it will be well worth it in the end!