Spring is quickly approaching (or may have already arrived, depending on the weather where you live) and with it comes that old standby – spring cleaning.

But more than just rearranging some things at your home, if you run a retail store spring cleaning can be an important part of keeping your store clean and your displays fresh. Spring cleaning gives you the chance to rotate displays, tidy up your layout, and keep your store looking as clean and up-to-date as possible!

While every store needs different cleaning approaches, we’ve got a few tips here you can use as a starting point to get your spring cleaning in gear:

Start With The Stockroom: Nine times out of ten, the stockroom is the area in a retail store that tends to need the most help – which makes sense considering the stockroom is the area that likely holds the most items and product. Start by cleaning, organizing and labeling your stockroom, bringing in extra wire shelving where needed to help increase the available storage space in your stockroom and help keep everything right where you need it.

Don’t Be Afraid To Throw It Away: While the temptation to hang onto all of your old clearance items until they’re finally sold may be strong, if nothing has moved and they’re just taking up space, it might be time to say goodbye. This goes double for perishables – even if they do sell, you don’t want to give your customers the impression that you’re willing to hold on to ancient candy just to make a sale!

Clean Up Your Records: No, we don’t mean vinyl (although if you do have a record store, we know how fast those can get disorganized). If you have a lot of paperwork you haven’t had to look at or is no longer relevant – old employee records, insurance paperwork from a previous insurer, etc – then feel free to toss it. Of course, you will want to keep an eye out for anything you do still need to retain like tax paperwork, and it’s always going to be tough to figure out what you need but it’ll be worth it. And if you do have a lot of paperwork and reports to hang onto, buying some new record storage for your backroom will help keep everything organized and tidy.

Time To Reorganize: If you’ve been thinking about changing the layout of your store, here’s the perfect time to do it! Tear down old displays, set up new layouts and merchandising plans, make a better path for your customers to walk down, and set everything up to your liking – at least until next spring when you decide to move everything again!