Spring Cleaning Checklist: Room-by-Room Guide to Decluttering Your Rockford Home

Spring in Rockford means one thing besides warmer weather: it's time to deal with the stuff that piled up over winter. Here's a room-by-room plan to actually get it done instead of just thinking about it.

Kitchen

• Toss expired food, spices, and sauces. Check the back of every cabinet.
• Get rid of duplicate utensils, chipped plates, and appliances you haven't used in a year.
• Pull the fridge away from the wall and clean behind it. If the fridge itself is on its last legs, that's a haul item.

Living room and bedrooms

• Old furniture nobody sits on. If the couch cushions are flat and stained, it's time.
• Broken electronics, old TVs, tangled cords. Box them up for e-waste or haul.
• Closets: anything you haven't worn in 12 months goes to donate or trash.
• Under the bed: storage bins full of mystery items from the last move.

Basement

• Water-damaged boxes and anything that smells like mildew. Don't sort it, just bag it.
• Old exercise equipment nobody uses. Treadmills and ellipticals are heavy. That's a hauler job.
• Holiday decorations that are broken or missing pieces.
• Paint cans. Dried latex is fine to toss. Wet paint goes to Winnebago County hazardous waste collection.

Garage

• Broken yard tools, flat tires, rusty grills.
• Kids' bikes and toys they outgrew three years ago.
• Scrap wood, old shelving, anything leaning against the wall collecting dust.

Yard and exterior

• Dead branches, brush piles, leftover fall leaves.
• Rotting deck furniture, old planters, broken fencing.
• That shed full of stuff you keep saying you'll organize. This is the year.

The haul pile

Once you've gone through every room, you'll probably have a pile bigger than what fits in your car. That's normal. Most Rockford spring cleanouts fill a half to full truckload.

EZ Junk Hauling serves Rockford, Loves Park, Machesney Park, Belvidere, Roscoe, Rockton, Cherry Valley, and Byron. Text photos of your pile to 815-201-2268 and we'll quote you in minutes. Same-day and next-day pickups available while the spring rush lasts.