I’m tired of COVID-19: hearing about it, talking about it, and writing about it. Let’s pretend life today was a year ago, and our main thoughts and feelings are about Spring. Aww, flowers, rain, and patio time.

Mother’s Day is my magic day for safe planting, and deep cleaning seems to rise to the top of my spring to-do-list. It is time to clean the garage, organized closets, wash windows, and replace dust and grime with squeaky clean. Our reward is the comfort of a house in order.

Does anything else need to be cleaned up? Do our traits or habits need scrubbing?

We may need to cleanup our minds. Replace bitter, critical thoughts with kind, positive thinking. With more than sufficient time to look at our spouse and children, we could consciously choose to focus on their goodness. We could do the same when we look in the mirror–what gets attention grows.

We may need to clean up our speech. It is interesting how some, even intelligent people, use words that contain only four letters. Using foul, inappropriate language portrays a person as foul and inappropriate. Funny how that works.

We may need to clean up our manners. “Please, Thank you, Excuse me, and I’m sorry” are powerful words. Even in isolation, we could hold the door open, offer our chair, smile, give compliments, pick up our trash, and not take our phones to dinner.

We may need to clean up our activities. Even being stuck in the house, we could limit time in front of the TV, computer, or electronic games. We could balance habits—limit the number of times opening the refrigerator, move our bodies even though the gym is closed, and moderate cocktails. We need to love our body, get enough sleep, stay connected to friends, eat colorful food, and avoid conspiracy theory topics.

We may need to clean up finances. Few things cause more anxiety or arguments than credit card bills, overdrafts, and creditors. One of my virus benefits is buying less. If you’re in money trouble, ask for help. There is no shame in admitting mismanagement as long as you take steps to correct the situation.

We may need to clean up our choice of friends; they are our mirrors. Friends are essential, but if they like us best only when we do what they want, we can make new friends.

Traditional spring-cleaning helps us get our home in order, self-isolation helps us with that, but let us not forget to clean up other factors in life. A clean closet is only the beginning.

Until the next time: Live while you live.

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