It’s that time of year! Not only are you spending more time at home than anticipated, but it’s also spring for many of you around the world, so it’s time to bring out the mops!
When you think of spring cleaning, you often think of tidying up your home or apartment (and don’t worry—Trello’s got you covered on that, too), but you should also consider some digital spring cleaning—like your Trello boards!
Just like physical clutter around your homestead, it’s easy to have cards and boards running amuck and in need of some tidying and organization. After all, what good is your organization system if even that isn’t organized?
If you need a checklist, here’s a good place to start.
3 Ways To Make Your Trello Boards Shine
1. Clean Up Old Cards
You can clean old cards from your board or Done list by creating rules in Butler to auto-archive cards after a certain date. You can also enable the Card Aging Power-Up to help you monitor old cards throughout the year so you don’t have to wait ‘til spring to identify any old ones that you’re not using anymore.
2. Do A Trello Board Audit
It’s time to banish that board bloat!
Go through your Trello boards and see if there are any open boards that you don’t need anymore. You can close Trello boards without deleting them and easily re-open them later if you need to refer to information at a future date.
It’s also a good time to audit your Power-Ups on the boards that you’re using and make sure you’re using them to their full potential. If there are any Power-Ups enabled that you’re not in need of anymore, it’s time to open up space to try some new ones.
Finally, if there are members on your boards who are no longer active, then you can go ahead and do them the favor by removing them from the boards.
3. Give Your Trello Boards A Fresh Coat Of Paint… AKA New Backgrounds!
Just like a little change of scenery can you make you more productive in the physical world, it can also make you more productive in the digital world. Swap out your board backgrounds with new pictures to motivate you.
Once you’ve got your Trello space spruced up, perhaps you’ll feel the motivation to give a little organizational love to your physical organization projects.
We’ve got you covered with the Cleaning Trello Board template. Since you shouldn’t just be cleaning in the springtime, we’ve added some tasks that will help you keep track of your cleaning throughout the entire year.
How To Use Trello To Spring Clean In Real Life
Why do you use the springtime to clean? While it doesn’t appear there’s any conclusive reason on why humans tend to declutter and clean homes from top to bottom in the spring, it appears that it has something to do with being cooped up all winter. With spring comes the expectation of warmth and new energy, and apparently a spotless home, too.
And if that wasn’t enough, did you know that cleaning is actually good for you?
Studies have shown that people with clean houses are healthier and are also less likely to experience anxiety. Your body craves order and rhythm, so providing that for the space you live in (and many are now working remotely in) helps everything to work better in sync.
Besides, one day when you are hosting dinner parties again, you’ll want it to be clean, right?
Here are some ways you can use Trello to manage your spring (and year-round) cleaning tasks.
1. Start With A Cleaning Board Template
We’ve got you (and your clutter) covered! Use this board template with all the great ideas you’ll find in this post. All you have to do is click “Create board from template” and you’ll be as motivated as Cinderella to sweep, mop, and dust in no time.
2. Organize Your Lists To Organize Your House
You can organize your lists just about any way you prefer, but I find it most helpful to organize by frequency. For instance, I have a list of things to accomplish daily, weekly, monthly, and annually.
You can organize lists by rooms in the house, by a person’s tasks, or anything else you want. When you want to organize it even further, you can use labels!
3. Use Labels To Categorize Your Tasks
If you’re using lists to organize the frequency of tasks, you can use labels to organize the rooms they need to happen in (or vice versa!). You can use labels to indicate the level of effort (such as “extremely difficult” to “quick five minute task” so that you can group your tasks by how much energy you’ll need to work up to cross it off the list.
4. Use Card Repeater ToAutomatically Build Your Cleaning To-do List
Wish you had someone to make your cleaning to-do list for you?
With the Card Repeater Power-Up, your wish is granted. For each item, you can indicate when you want that card to reappear, so once you cross “Clean Toilets” off and archive it, you can rest at ease knowing it will show back up at the frequency you desire.
5. Break Big Cleaning Tasks Into Small Ones With Checklists
Some spring cleaning tasks can just feel too much to tackle in one sitting. Try adding a checklist to these tasks to make them more manageable. Take cleaning out your closet for instance.
You can use a checklist to break down specific subtasks that you can accomplish over time. The best part of Trello checklists is that you can see your progress as you check off the boxes!
6. Make Cleaning A Group Effort
Tired of reminding the kids to do their chores? Or asking your roommate to do the recycling?
You can easily assign members to specific cards so everyone can see what they need to accomplish. And you can also see whose tasks are still remaining! 😬
Trello makes it easy to filter your board by cards by member. Just click “Show Menu” in the top right corner, then click “Search cards”, then click the member you want to see. No more confusion about who was supposed to take out the trash!
7. Ensure Quality Control Measures On Cleaning Tasks
Speaking of assigning chores, if you have some kids (or a spouse) that you can’t always trust to do the job without a second set of eyes… the Approvals Trello Power-Up was made for you.
This Power-Up lets you add a step to a card to ensure someone has “approved”, marking it as actually complete, and not just wishful thinking.
All you have to do is designate a member to approve that card, and when they’ve had a chance to check, they can cross approve or reject it!
8. Notice Which Chores You Haven’t Tackled In A While With Card Aging
If you’re worried about certain cleaning tasks being forgotten, add the Card Aging Power-Up to your spring cleaning board. It changes the appearance of a card if it goes without activity. Pro tip: there’s even a pirate mode! 🏴☠It’s an easy way to spot chores that haven’t been addressed in a while—like cleaning the dust bunnies out from under the sink... *shudders*.
9. Attach GIFs For Motivation
Did you know that you can add GIFs to your Trello card covers? If you thought vacuuming lacked excitement, that was before you had something like this reminding you to do it.
In all honesty though, cleaning can be boring. By adding funny GIFs to your board you can prevent coming down with a case of board-om 😆
Grab That Sponge And Get Ready To Spring Clean!
So now it’s time to get to business and start spring cleaning with Trello. Start by grabbing this handy spring cleaning Trello template and then customize it to make it your own. Good luck with the cleaning, and we’d love to see your boards and cheer you on as you give your physical and digital spaces a deep clean.
Share your screenshots on Twitter (@trello) or on the Atlassian Community. It’s a fun place where we share things we’re trying and ask questions all about Trello! I’d love to see you over there.
Good or bad, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Find us on Twitter (@trello)!
Next: 6 Tactical Ways To Use Trello Board And Card Templates
