5 Surprising Health Benefits of House Cleaning
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Reduces stress and improves mental health
Cleaning your home is important, but not just for appearances.
Maintaining your home regularly has incredible effects on your mental wellbeing. It is easy to neglect it, but if you can put in a bit of time consistently to keep your home clean you can dramatically improve your mental health.
Anxiety and stress are a big problem today. When people are stressed, they produce more of the steroid hormone, cortisol. Studies have shown that people produce higher cortisol levels when their homes are messy and cluttered. Excess stress levels are linked to a shorter lifespan and many major diseases and illnesses.
Regular housework feels good because it actually decreases these cortisol levels. When people clean even for just 20 minutes, it results in lower anxiety and stress. Not only does your house look and feel better, but YOU will feel better too!
Having a clean space gives your mind room to think. It is much easier to relax after a stressful day at work when you return to a clean and well-maintained house.
It’s a lot harder to relax when your home is a mess.
Improves your immune system
Cleaning your home drastically improves the air quality inside. You spend the majority of your time at home inside, so it should have the cleanest air, right?
When you don’t keep your home clean, allergens and pollutants clog up the environment and nestle their way onto your home’s surfaces. These allergens attack your immune system, leaving you more vulnerable to illnesses and health problems.
By regularly cleaning, you can ensure that the air quality in your home stays clean and fresh.
It’s important to dust and sweep but it’s just as important to vacuum and wipe down surfaces. When you dust and sweep, you are simply displacing dust and dirt.
Vacuuming and wiping surfaces on a consistent basis sucks up those nasty little particles from the air and allows you to breathe easier and live a healthier life.
Keeping germs at bay reduces the chances of cold, flu, and other infectious germs from spreading.
If you have a family, you know the rule: if one person is sick, everyone is going to be sick. However, if you clean and disinfect common areas regularly you can keep those germs away.
Try to do at least 20 minutes of cleaning and disinfecting every day, especially during the flu season. Waiting for one week to do a deep clean allows germs to fester for days, and increases the likelihood you will get sick. Instead, it’s better to clean for shorter durations consistently throughout the week.
Being aware of where germs like to hang out is important too.
The kitchen sink is usually teeming with germs, and it is always a good idea to clean it every day. Bathrooms are a problem area as well.
High traffic areas are especially susceptible, so think about what areas of your home get touched most often and tackle those parts of your home every day.
Reduces your risk of injury
When your home is messy it can be dangerous. It is easier for accidents to happen when there is a lot of clutter. The chances that you are going to trip over a box or have an appliance fall on you increases as your home gets messier.
If you let things build up, it gets much more difficult to remember where everything is. Surfaces and floors get overcrowded and an accident is far more likely to happen.
This is more important depending on whether you have young children, pets, or older occupants.
The best way to keep your home safe and yourself safe, is to keep it clean. Be sure to keep your shelves well-spaced out, and put all of your heavy items on the bottom near the floor. All boxes and excess items should be stored out of sight and away from open areas. Use caution when you are in the kitchen and bathroom, the areas of the house where the most accidents happen.
Improves your sleep
Have you ever drifted peacefully off to sleep after neglecting your chores and procrastinating all day? Yeah, we didn’t think so.
Cleaning gives you a sense of accomplishment, and studies show that when you feel productive you will experience better sleep.
Even the small task of making your bed in the morning improves your chances of having a good night’s sleep drastically.
Cleaning your home gets your body moving and physical activity is a must for healthy sleep!
Inactivity correlates with increased cortisol levels, and cortisol plays an important role in sleep regulation. Gentle exercise does wonders for reducing cortisol, and cleaning is the perfect activity for it! You can control how much exertion you’re willing to put in.
Even a few minutes of activity (like making your bed) can work wonders on lowering cortisol, and improving your sleep patterns.
Improves your eating habits
Remember when we talked about cortisol earlier? Physical activity like cleaning reduces this stress hormone. When cortisol is elevated, your body responds by craving unhealthy, junk food.
It’s a part of our natural survival system, and one way we can combat this is with, you guessed it- a bit of cleaning!
If you can incorporate cleaning into your daily life, your body is much more likely to crave healthy snacks like an apple. Plus, people living in a clean, and organized space have actually been shown to prefer healthier food.
Building up a routine of regular cleaning also translates into your consumption habits. When you’re living in a cluttered, messy home, your own thoughts about yourself can be influenced by this environment.
When your home is messy it is easy for your self-talk to break you down instead of building you up. When we’re feeling down, we want to stuff ourselves with every unhealthy snack in existence to make us feel better- ice cream, chips, candy, chocolate, you name it.
On the flip side, when we’re feeling productive and accomplished, we crave healthy foods to keep us going. So grab that duster! Do a few minutes of dusting and see how you feel afterward.
So, not only does house cleaning improve your mental and physical health, but it instills positive habits that over time can have an incredible effect on your life.
Even just 5 minutes of cleaning per day can give you an important boost in ways that you never even expected.
At Seatown Cleaners, we want to help you live the happiest, healthiest, and most fulfilling life possible. House cleaning is a simple and effective way to improve your health in more ways than you could have ever imagined.
