Simple Ways Spring Cleaning Helps You Reclaim Your Happiness
Do some spring cleaning around your house to reduce stress and reclaim your happiness.
Spring season is here, and as nature woke up from the winter slumber, we are preparing to embrace the delightful weather outside. Spring cleaning is one way we leave the dreary winter months to refresh our lives and welcome the warm season.
What is Spring Cleaning?
Though you can clean throughout the year, cleaning goes on to an entirely new level during the spring months. It is time to open up the windows and let the soft sunshine in. Spring cleaning involves dusting the cobwebs and removing dirt from around the house, washing and packing up the heavy wools and flannels, and indulge in some cool crisp cotton and linens.
Although it is named after spring and points to the home’s annual cleaning during springtime, any deep cleaning that you do around the year can be a spring cleaning ritual.
We thoroughly and deeply clean the house during spring to make it open up for the light, airy weather outside.
It can be a tedious process involving hard work and a lot of elbow grease. The process can make you feel overwhelmed initially, especially when you bring out your inner cleaning goddess and strive to do it all alone just because no one can clean as efficiently as you, right?
“Housekeeping ain’t no joke.” — Louisa May Alcott.
But as you take a deep breath and start tackling one corner at a time, you notice a difference in yourself.
Little by little, as you dust away the cobwebs, your body feels lighter, and the mind that was confused and filled with doom and gloom gets a flicker of hope.
You love this change of feeling and start scrubbing the dusty window sills with renewed enthusiasm. The more you sweat cleaning, wiping, dusting various areas in the house, your mind takes on a different character.
It imitates the outside cheer of spring and starts dancing with optimism and fun. You continue with the cleaning with more vigor and soon hum your favorite songs while doing so.
Why does spring cleaning make you feel happy?
The work is dirty, tedious, and overwhelming, and your arms hurt with so much scrubbing and wiping. But then, you start feeling happy and cheerful, maybe for the first time in weeks if not months.
How do such simple acts of decluttering and cleaning help you get such a transformation?
Here is how spring cleaning helps you get mental balance and reduce stress and anxiety in the process.
You get into better mind space.
Our mind is unique as it often reflects the surrounding we are in. So, when clouds rumble, you feel sad and nostalgic. Winter makes you feel dark, lazy. As you finally open the window to let the first rays of the spring season in, the balmy wind and the fresh sunshine transform your mood.
Who can stay down amidst the doom and gloom when the spring comes bustling in?
When you do any physical work, the effort you put in causes a burst of the feel-good hormone dopamine. All that scrubbing, cleaning, dusting can hurt your arms, but the dopamine boost can improve your mood in no time. That is why exercise can make us so darn happy.
“What I know for sure is that when you declutter — whether it’s on your home, your head, or your heart — it is astounding what will flow into that space that will enrich you, your life, and your family.” ― Peter Walsh, Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight: The Six-Week Total-Life Slim Down
You get a clean and organized space.
All that cleaning and reorganizing your furniture makes your home look pleasant, different, and clean. Have you ever sat in the middle of a room cluttered with dirty plates, empty pizza cartons, books, and stationery scattered all over the table? I cannot imagine how you were feeling, but it sure was not a very joyful experience.
A cluttered place makes our minds foggy and can confuse and make us feel negative. As you know, negative emotions are far more intense than positive ones. So, in the absence of any emotions, we feel the negativity more readily than the positives. To feel hopeful and optimistic about life, you need to nurture and cultivate uplifting thoughts. A well-organized and clean environment gives you the motivation to be more optimistic about life and reduce negativity.
You declutter your mind and stay away from self-defeating behaviors.
Think again about your spring-cleaning routine. You started to clean in the morning, and it took almost the entire day. All this while as you were busy dusting, washing, and drying, you probably did not get a moment to yourself. Keeping busy has kept you from thinking unproductive thoughts of failure and hopelessness. When you are busy, your mind becomes engaged in doing the work faster and adequately. The entire ritual of activity does not give you the luxury to wallow away on self-pity and self-doubts. All these activities made you forget to reach for your mobile the first thing in the morning for social media’s endless scrolls.
As you engaged yourself on a cleaning spree, you forgot to check your friends’ status updates on FB or agonize over your selfies. Spring cleaning allowed you to take a break from social media and the obsessive watching of your emails.
Rather than lounging on your couch lamenting on your lackluster life, you spend the day productively. That’s one full day without worrying and regretting the decisions you took ten years ago. So, are you feeling proud?
You develop a sense of routine that drives away mindless drifting throughout the day.
If you think of planning a cleaning ritual during the day, it sets your mood for some other routines around your work and life. Establishing well-defined habits can put your mind free from those endless worries even when you do not heal them. Regular cleaning and decluttering can ease your mind and make you more productive in creating and sticking to all the other routines in your life.
You develop better relationships.
Spring cleaning can also give a boost to your relationships. Involve your partner and kids in the act; ask them to change the linens as you scrub away the window panes. Working together will make you feel like a team and ease the boredom that can often set in close relationships.
Throwing a party with some delicious food (takeaway if you please) afterward can bring back the excitement in your otherwise dull life. You can bask in the glory of a job well done and pat each other’s back. To sum it up, it never hurts to move your lazy butts and start with your spring cleaning this season. Just don’t overdo it so much that you have to take a week-long sabbatical just to recover from it!
Remember, a little goes a long way, and don’t forget to have some fun!
Happy spring cleaning.