Cleaning is one of the many tasks that are being put off daily. There’s always the thought deep in our mind saying, “It’ll get dirty anyway.” But leaving rooms untidy actually adds up to your stress every day. Psychologist Sherrie Bourg Carter explains that clutter and mess add up to a person’s stress every day. A simple way to remove that stress is to clean it up.
It’s never easy to integrate something like cleaning into one’s daily, stressful, life. However, once you get started, you might never stop, as the lifestyle benefits of cleaning are much bigger than you think. So start integrating cleaning into your lifestyle by using these three easy ways.
Start Cleaning Once You Wake Up
Cleaning might not be the first thing in your mind when you wake up. Most likely the first thing you would think of waking up is to sleep more. But cleaning is actually the best thing you can do the moment you open your eyes for the first time in the morning, as it helps energize your mind.
You don’t have to start by cleaning the entire room. You can start by making your bed. This is the centerpiece item in the room and by tidying it, you instantly make the rest of the room cleaner than before. This will then start your new day on an optimistic note. Once you start tidying your bed every morning, you’ll start feeling the urge to clean the rest of the room. Eventually, you’ll have an itch to start cleaning because of how it makes you feel good.
Cleaning as a Stress Reliever
You might have never thought of cleaning as a way to relieve the stress you get from work. But it’s actually one of the best stress relievers out there and the best part of it all is that is free.
There are a lot of things that happen in your mind when you clean, one of which the release of endorphins. Endorphins are chemicals produced by the brain to help relieve stress and pain. Usually, it’s related to exercise, but it was found that cleaning or any physically taxing activity releases this particular chemical. So by cleaning after a long day from work, you’re helping your mind and body relax. Another benefit of cleaning after a long day from work is that it can help you sleep better.
Additionally, a study has found that women with less clutter in their home have lower cortisol levels than those who have a cluttered home. Generally, people think of clutter in their house even if they don’t feel like cleaning it. This increases cortisol levels which eventually leads to higher levels of stress. It was found that people with lower cortisol levels benefit from healthy marriages and lower depressed moods. So start cleaning when you come home from work. One way to help you start is to play some music when you’re cleaning. The thought of music eases your mind as you clean your house and before you know it, you’ve gotten rid of all the clutter and mess from your house.
Make Cleaning a Social Activity
Cleaning isn’t meant to be done alone. Much like every activity, we do as human beings, cleaning is meant to be done alongside others. It also makes cleaning much faster, especially when you have a family.
We’ve all been through the trouble of looking into the hobbies of our family members and saw how dirty they really are. After a weekend filled with sports and other recreational activities, it’s often you see a mud-covered basketball, dirty sports shoes, and dirt all over the house. Everyone forgetting to clean until they need them again.
In some situations, cleaning becomes entirely forgotten. One example is during exhausting fishing trips with the kids. Some of the dirty fishing gear gets left behind, the fish that were caught during the trip are left in the cooler and eventually turns rotten, and the family car is left in complete disarray. These are situations that all parents have been through. It’s hard to deny that our family members can be a real slob at times, but once you start introducing them to cleaning and its benefits, you’ll start seeing a better and cleaner home.
You can start to introduce cleaning as a chore to your kids by making a kids chore chart. Through the use of the chart, you can reward your children by how much they clean around the house. It’s a healthy way to teach your kids the fundamentals of cleaning and how it can benefit them as they grow up. Cleaning can also be done at the weekend as a fun bonding time with the family.
Cleaning can be such a chore for most people. However, it has a lot of lifestyle benefits that can bring you and your family closer. It can also benefit you individually by making your life more structured and controlled. A clutter-free and mess-free home lead you to a much healthier lifestyle.