There’s something to be said for the tidy house, tidy mind mantra. Without going into the ins and outs of the psychological impact of cleaning and decluttering, we know it’s beneficial because, well, we feel it and there’s no arguing with that.
Cleanliness is next to godliness!
Throughout the month of March, we’ll be bringing you a whole hub of helpful tips to make light work of your spring cleaning. Not only because cleanliness is next to godliness but because we all know our minds need the digital blackout too.
Slip into your finest marigolds, we’re going in!
Why do we spring clean?
Inhale.
Picture this. You’ve scrubbed the house top to bottom and organised the junk drawer where cables, receipts and hair bobbles go to die. You’ve polished the kitchen counter to within an inch of its life. You might have fluffed cushions, sucked away all evidence of sofa crumbs and cobwebs and lit a few candles, reserved only for this ritual right here.
You climb into bed, wrapped in that crisp fresh linen spritzed with some kind of therapeutic mist and you sleep better, don’t you?
When everything around you has its place, your mind find its way back to you. You’re not trying to work a body and a mind that operate independently from one another; they’re in unison once again and stillness resumes.
Exhale.
You might discover similar moments elsewhere in your day-to-day life; in the quiet whir of the coffee machine before the rest of the world is awake, or when your phone runs out of battery and you find yourself secretly happy for the inconvenience. We don’t know for sure, but we can only guess that what you feel in that moment is your brain doing a little tiny happy blow off. Like a self-inflating Whoopee Cushion finally sat on and relinquished of its duty.
You gain an extra half an hour of glorious existence before it glows back to life and you’re engrossed in the Tick Tock rabbit hole again. Like, share, repeat.
We’re all guilty of searching for the permission to be momentarily excused from digital distraction
We’re all guilty of searching for the permission to be momentarily excused from digital distraction; to leave the table of comparison we’re forever gorging on. We’ve all felt it. But why do we wait until our phones – and indeed our physical selves – are burning out? Only when our hand is forced do we decide to manage our time differently and reshuffle our priorities.
Cleaning has a unique way of ironing out our problems, literally and metaphorically. At the very least, it’s an hour or two away from our devices, a chance to add order to chaos and invest our energy into something with a clear objective and end result. We have used an hour wisely and have the evidence of a tidy space to prove it. We just need to find the gusto to do it in the first place!
Spring is often the best time to declutter your space. The turn of the seasons presents a very tangible sense of change and new beginnings. Everything gets lighter and sunnier around us which sets the precedent for optimism and renewal in our own lives. With life blooming into colour all around us, we can’t help but mimic nature – letting go of things that no longer serve us and making room for new found possibility and purpose.
The power of productivity
With a lot of us shifting into careers where working remotely is the norm, the line between our work and our lives has grown ever fainter and increasingly blurred. Our living room is now serving as our office, meeting room, Skype zone and somewhere we’re told we need to recline and switch off.
We create the physical space in which we need to live and function properly
If we declutter our homes, we immediately eliminate the visual noise that causes us to lose focus. We create the physical space in which we need to live and function properly but more than that, we create the kind of environment our headspace depends upon in order to thrive.
Boost your mood
If you’ve ever felt lighter after you’ve been on a decluttering marathon or deep clean, you’ll be able to vouch for the psychological payoff that comes with taking the time to tend to your living space. That wave of calm that comes over you when you’re sat in that armchair admiring your finest work. The physical activity gets us moving and sweating and when paired with a killer playlist, there’s just no stopping us. Even the fruit in the fruit bowl’s getting dusted. Nothing is safe.
Best cleaning accounts
If you need a bit of motivation to get you started, these ‘cleanstagrammers’ know a thing or two about how to handle a feather duster. Follow and prepare to get your clean freak ON.
Mrs Hinch Home| Lynsey Queen of Clean | Clean Mama | This Girl Can Organise | A Bowl Of Lemons | Simply Organized | The Organised Mum
