When it comes to happiness, everyone always seems to recommend mindfulness, vacations and quality time spent together with your friends. But what happens when you come back to your home and you feel it’s burdening you, rather than freeing your mind? Or what happens when you want to engage in mindful thinking, but the clutter keeps blurring your mind? What is often disregarded when it comes to mental wellbeing is the positive effect that cleaning your house can have on it. Let’s look at a few ways in which you can benefit from maintaining a clean home:

1. Clean Mind Actually Helps Reduce Anxiety and Depression

Cortisol, the hormone stress, tends to decline naturally throughout the day, fencing off negative feelings and fighting off depression. However, by living every second in a cluttered environment, you can prevent this useful process from occurring in the body. This means you will most likely feel mentally clouded, anxious or maybe even guilty for always postponing cleaning. 

The only way to combat this is to take action and start breaking down chores into smaller chunks that you can immediately take care of. Get rid of the pile of clothes, clean out your desk and finish that laundry list. Trust me, the gratitude and satisfaction you’ll feel will make you want to pat yourself on the back for a job well done.

2. It Can Help You Eat Healthier

Think about it. If you walk into your kitchen and it’s spotless every time, you won’t consider eating something that’s unhealthy or just for comfort – they just don’t go hand in hand. You’ll want to go the extra mile and choose greener foods, maybe even eco-friendly ones and you’ll probably feel the need to cook these groceries in a way that promotes a healthy lifestyle and generates positive thinking. So declutter your counter, get rid of seldom used appliances and clean out your fridge. 

3. Clean Mind Will Help You Become More Productive

By keeping a clean home and integrating a more organized way of being into your lifestyle, you’ll have to do very little every day in order to maintain the cleanliness of your home. By putting your jacket in the coat rack instead of dropping it on the floor or by finding adequate space for a book instead of stacking it in an overcrowded shelf, you can avoid spending tremendous amounts of time restoring your home down the line. Apart from this, living in a spacious, clutter-free space will give your brain the freedom it needs for you to become a happy employee, with lots of vitality and desire to work.

4. Clean Mind Will Help You Sleep Better at Night

It’s already a tale as old as time that people who make their beds in the morning are more productive and happier throughout the day. By transforming this into a habit, those feelings will consolidate in your heart and will get you closer to your goal in the pursuit of happiness. So wash your bed linens and fluff your pillows. In addition to this, stay organized throughout the day, so when the night comes you’ll go to bed feeling rewarded and relaxed, instead of pressed and guilty. This will give you better-quality sleep which in turn will result in a better mood and being more creative. 

5. It Can Help Improve Your Relationships

We all know that a relationship is not a one-way street and oftentimes what we put into it is what we receive right back. So it’s only natural that if we put in our stressed selves in the game, the quality of our relationships will dwindle. So this is why cleaning your home pays off in more than one way. Additionally, if you live together with a spouse, disorganization can cost you a lot of the time you could be spending together with them. It’s all connected and once you start realizing this, your life will change for the better.

As you can see, these are only a few ways in which decluttering your home and maintaining it clean can help you have a fluff-free mind. This will add to your feeling more relaxed, productive and happier in your personal and professional life, as well as in relationship to the important people in your life.

About the Author

‘Claudia Spataru is a free spirit located in Bucharest, Romania and always in search of answers to life’s greatest questions. She loves to understand how people work, what makes them tick and find ways to help them reach higher grounds. She adores the sea, traveling and laughing.’

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How a Clean House Creates a Clean Mind