Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and social disruption and what we can learn from it.

I'm Tim O'Brien. Every week on Crash Course, I'm going to bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic upheavals occur and

I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition collide

with competition and power.

Listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the IHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.

Good morning. This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast Podcast.

Today's tip is about how to spring clean without losing all your free time in the process.

When the weather turns nicer, many people like to open up their homes and freshen things up.

We're not living in the era when this was about airing out soot, but still, the impulse to spring clean is strong.

This is especially true this year when many of us are spending way more time in our homes

than we're accustomed to. In normal times you might keep walking past that streak on the

wall in your kitchen and continue on to everything else. This year there's nowhere

to escape. Of course the trouble with this is that housework like email can expand to fill all

available space. Consequently this year in particular we need to figure out how to spring clean

without consuming all our time.

It will probably not surprise you that I think this calls for getting organized.

Instead of just grabbing a spray bottle and paper towels and going for it, or as one friend of mine posted on

social media, rage cleaning and actually throwing all her family's dirty dishes in the trash,

make a list of projects that will have the most impact. These are actual

...