What are the best cleaning tasks for stress relief? · 1. Make the beds · 2. Wipe the kitchen counters · 3. Do a quick vacuuming · 4. Do a 5-minute
Can cleaning help you reduce stress? There are lots of different ways that we can manage our stress. We each have our routine that we reach for when we feel overwhelmed. Some may try yoga, or mindfulness exercises, maybe even head to the hairdressers or for a massage. For others, dusting shelves, wiping down the kitchen or organising is their way to deal with stress. Cleaning is just as beneficial for our mental health as mindfulness related activities. For some people, coming home to a clean [...] Clutter and mess can be linked to negative emotions like confusion and tension. Whereas a clean and tidy home leads to positive emotions such as a sense of calm and well-being. By sorting and organising the clutter and mess around you, you can reduce any stress or anxiety you may be feeling and this will help you feel like you are taking control of your life. The physical activity of cleaning combined with the result of a cleaner home helps reduce stress, feelings of anxiety, and depressive [...] Whether you think of cleaning as a meditative task, or an energetic throw yourself into it task. Either way, any form of exercise releases endorphins. Endorphins send messages to your brain that changes your perception of pain and will trigger positive emotions in your body. Regular exercise has been proven to reduce stress and reduce anxiety, along with preventing depression. Cleaning will also have these effects on your body and mental health as long as these chores require some physical
Whether someone is dealing with depression or is simply overwhelmed, we often use a technique called behavioral activation, which involves purposefully engaging in achievable activities to improve mood. This approach has been borne out in research; one study even suggests that cleaning can help alleviate stress, even when the stressor has nothing to do with the clutter. Spring cleaning is a great example of behavioral activation. [...] In behavioral activation, we help our clients identify objectively achievable tasks (this will often include cleaning or straightening up) and help them differentiate these actions from the stressors and tasks that the individual finds overwhelming. We also help them chunk down any large, overwhelming task into smaller, more manageable steps. [...] “When our living environment becomes unmanageable for a period of time, it can be a symptom of depression or anxiety,” says Michael Carollo, PsyD, a clinical psychologist at Columbia University. We asked Dr. Carollo to explain how clutter can impact mental health—and how activities like spring cleaning can help. ## How does clutter affect our mental health? Some research has suggested that extensive clutter can have a negative impact on well-being.
Engaging in an activity like cleaning, where countless choices need to be made and progress can be visually marked helps alleviate that anxiety and stress. It grounds us, giving us a sense that we’ve regained control of our decisions. It also engages our executive cognitive abilities, keeping our brain focused on the task at hand instead of worrying about all the unknowns. Press enter or click to view image in full size Photo by Crema Joe on Unsplash ### Satisfaction releases happy hormones [...] Whether it’s cleaning out a closet, organizing our inbox, or scrubbing the floors, cleaning can help us feel like we’re in control of an outcome. We start with a mess and end with a tidy space. This is even more powerful if the cause of our stress is something we can’t control. [...] ### Conclusion There’s no way we can escape stress entirely. As our modern lives pile things on our plate, stress will often follow. While there are a multitude of strategies we can employ to help mitigate stress, cleaning and organizing is always an easy activity we can engage in that provides numerous benefits. Even better, the more we do, the more effective it becomes. So start organizing today! Kwik Brain Neuroscience Brain Training Organization Stress Management Jim Kwik Jim Kwik
Cleaning is a form of physical exercise that triggers the release of endorphins, which are feel-good hormones that can alleviate stress and improve your
Physical activity of cleaning coupled with the end result of a cleaner home helps reduce stress, feelings of anxiety, and depressive symptoms.
## found that (a) concrete visual simulation of cleaning behavior alleviated residual anxiety from a stress-inducing physical scene, an effect distinct from touch, and (b) actual cleaning behavior enhanced adaptive cardiovascular reactivity to a highly stressful context of social performance/evaluation, which provides the first physiological evidence for the attenuation of stress-related effects by cleaning. Overall, actual cleaning and simulated cleaning attenuate effects of physical or [...] others; Tesser, 2000). Paralleling such mental mechanisms, we observe that cleaning can attenuate the effects of psychological threats to one’s self—as moral (West & Zhong, 2015), as rational (Lee & Schwarz, 2010), as competent (Kaspar, 2012), and as socially accepted (the present findings). This opens up a broad and exciting avenue for future research: Daily cleaning behavior, mundane as it seems, may serve supplementary coping functions that not only attenuate stress but also sustain positive [...] Visually simulated experience of cleaning behavior reduced residual anxiety from a stress-inducing physical scene. The manipulation involved mere visual simulation, with effect sizes (_d_ s = 0.205 and 0.141) in the expected small range by traditional standards (J. Cohen, 1988) and comparable with those in contemporary preregistered between-subjects research (Schäfer & Schwarz, 2019). The effect was observed and replicated on a pictorial measure of anxiety derived from basic emotional