Can You Bee-Live It’s Spring? How to Spring Clean & Decorate

Despite the cloudy rainy weather of Spring, I can’t help but whistle along with chirping birds and the late sunsets. We definitely do have a lot to miss about Winter, but we know it’ll be back sooner than we expect! Spring cleaning is a long standing tradition. Did you know March is the best time for cleaning? Historically, it was because the weather was warm enough to open windows and doors, but not warm enough for insects to be an issue. Then, the wind would carry the dust out of the home. It’s absolutely one of my most favourite traditions, not only because I get to clean out everything but also because it means I get to decorate! 

As an alternative to buying expensive posters or souvenirs from travels, I usually keep pay stubs, tickets, and brochures that I find aesthetically well designed. They’ve been piling up in my drawer and being too sentimental to throw them out, I decided, after cleaning up the wall space between my windows of my room, that they were otherwise bare and available for decorating!

I’m not proud to say that I’ve been harbouring years of adventures in my drawers. From my return to Hong Kong in 2014, Sweden in 2015, and Rome in 2016… So yes, spring cleaning was necessary.

 

 

3 windows, 4 in-between spaces (one occupied by a full height mirror), and 3 trips- this is perfect! I begin in the middle wall section, and eyeball the amount of material and wall-space. I got rid of a select pieces (stuffed back into my drawers for next spring maybe). On this wall, there are movie stubs, postcards, amusement parks maps, and origami cranes left from a hotel night. I could go on! I kept birthday cards from 2010 when I was only 16- an earlier visit to Hong Kong. The easiest part of this type of decorating is almost the like of scrap booking which has no template and freedom of changing, trimming, cutting, and pasting!

 

A physical scrapbook on a wall – free design

 

 

Moving on, I begin my 2015 Trip to Sweden, the wall is decorated with similar artefacts: museum outings, embroidered patches, flight tickets, and student cards. At this point, it starts getting messy, I begin to include art collected from Toronto, tickets from New York, and postcards from friends. Sometimes it helps to place the larger pieces first, like the big “A” sticker for architecture in Lund University, and the smaller items as add-ons for the end, like the little toy from a late night McDonald’s trip.

It’s a nostalgic sunny kind of weekend, looking at mementos.

 

 

Finally, the last wall, the trip to Rome and others consist almost entirely of ticket stubs, or the occasional transit ticket, even a visit to the Barcelona pavillion.

Looking at the final pieces of my now, almost entirely covered wall, I ironically feel more organised despite being surrounded by paper, technically. At least it has become a semi-permanent addition to a more personalised bedroom. How do you collect your memories? Photos? Artwork? Collages? Share your thoughts!