Spring is officially here.  It’s the season of budding trees, daffodils, and the sense that summer will really arrive.

It’s also the season when many people get the urge to clean – to throw open their windows, declutter, dust and, in general, reclaim their homes.  It’s almost as if they are whisking away any remnants of winter with a new, clean fresh start.

The history of spring clean can be traced to religions and cultural traditions that date back to ancient times.  But, more simply, it’s a great time here in New England to let fresh air in and disorder out.

It seems like it should be simple -- work that can be done with mops and brooms – but as our lives have become more complicated, so has the task of cleaning and decluttering.

In honor of spring, Beacon Media talked to several professional organizers in an attempt to get some inspiration for clearing away the cobwebs and also take a look at the psychology of clearing your space and why, for many people, it is such a difficult task to tackle.

Stacy Jackson, owner of Little Boxes (Organizing, Downsizing and Decluttering) in Warwick, loves to make order out of disorder.  She has dug through entire households, garages, basements, and more in order to help clients get control of their “stuff” – and their lives.

A former teacher who has also worked as an artisan restoring stained glass, Jackson said she found her career as an organizer after her father-in-law passed away.   He had been an eclectic collector, she said, and after his passing the family was left not only with grief, but the weight of what to do with his many possessions.

“I would say that loss and major life changes are the two biggest reasons I am contacted,” she said.  “It can be someone who is starting a new career or getting ready to retire, but they cope with making changes in their homes and deciding it is time to move on.”

One of the things she loves about being an organizer, she said, is that it is a visible way to help people, and most clients end up feeling better about themselves – not just their homes.

“It’s just so good to see progress being made and a project completed,” she said.  “Getting started is the hardest thing for most people – it’s very easy to get overwhelmed.  But I love it.”  She added that after a completing a job, she gets notes from clients saying that they felt better about themselves.

Elsie Seber, a professional organizer for nearly 10 years, agrees about the transformative nature of cleaning up one’s life.  Owner and founder of Min2MAX based in Barrington, Seber said her professional mission is to help people “achieve clarity of action by optimizing (their) environment.”

Like all the professionals we interviewed, she said aside from the physical and practical results that come from being organized, there are psychological and emotional benefits to getting one’s house in order.

“I associate physical chaos with mental chaos,” Seber said, adding that she after she finishes a job, she often gets heartfelt letters of gratitude from clients who say they are not only enjoying being neater, but they feel calmer and more peaceful

“For me being organized is about just being in a space that you can breathe in,” said Seber who worked as a project manager at Boston University and at the Herreshoff Marine Museum in Bristol.

She said she is very neat by nature and attributes the trait to having grown up sharing a bedroom with a very messy younger sister. “I’ve been organizing ever since then,” she said.

Most clients feel guilty or ashamed that they need help getting their homes in order, but Seber said they should know that needing professional assistance is more common than they think.  Studies have shown, she said, that many Americans buy items that already own simply because they can’t find what is in their homes.

Seber said that when many clients first contact her it’s because they feel stuck “or frozen.  “I tell people I can help unfreeze them,” she said.  “We do it together -- it helps so much when you have a teammate.”

Rachel Fontaine, owner of Fontaine Organizing in Cranston, said that she understands the work her clients put into learning how to keep their houses free of clutter because she is not a naturally neat person. “I had to teach myself to be organized,” said.  “I like to describe organization as the ability to find what you need when you need it – I can pretty much find anything in my house at any time.”

Like other professionals in her field, Fontaine has invested time and training for her work and belongs to several national industry organizations including the Institute for Challenging Disorganization. She also collaborates with colleagues on some jobs and said she often works with Kate Bosch, a professional organizer in Providence.

Bosch, who has fond childhood memories of organizing her toybox, said she loves helping other people dismantle their messes.  “It’s like a fun puzzle to me,” she said, adding that communication with the client throughout the process is key.

Laurie Lindemann, owner of DeClutter Pronto, in East Greenwich agrees. Clients are letting you into their lives when they ask for help cleaning up their homes and it can be an emotional process, she said.

“I love this work, and I try to make it fun for my clients,” she said.  “Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry together but we do have fun.”

 Lindemann follows the teachings of Marie Kondo, the Japanese organizing consultant who rocketed to fame around 2011 when she published her book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

It sold millions of copies and in 2015 she was named to Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world and now oversees a business empire committed to the art of decluttering. Kondo has approximately 4 million followers on Instagram and is well known for her philosophy that your home should not be cluttered with items that do not bring you joy.

Lindemann said that Kondo changed her life and got her on the path of becoming a professional organizer.  She was grieving the loss of her husband and going through mountains of his belongings in the family’s historic Cape Cod style house when she read Kondo’s book.

“I thought, ‘I can do this,’” she said.  And after going to New York City to hear Kondo speak in 2016, she became a certified Kondo consultant.

Lindemann said that people will be amazed at what a little decluttering can do.  She had just started culling from her own home when she found that guests would ask if she had gotten new furniture or painted a room.

“People thought I had redecorated when all I had really done was gotten rid of some things,” she said.

Spring is a great time for cleaning, Lindemann said, and it can be a season that lasts all year long.  “I find that after clearing their spaces, people start taking better care of themselves,” she said.  “They take off the clothes that were hanging on the treadmill and start using it.

“It’s like I’ve helped them open up space for new beginnings.”