5 Need-to-Know Benefits of Keeping a Clean House

5 Need-to-Know Benefits of Keeping a Clean House

It’s Sunday morning, and the Sunday Scaries are settling in. Looking around your kitchen over your morning coffee, you see the dishes piled in the sink, the dirt ground into the floor, and the cobwebs in the corner. You can barely drag yourself to do the barest house cleaning, let alone any deep cleaning

Is cleaning your house really that important, or can you pull a blanket over your head and ignore it for another week while you consider hiring a cleaning service? Read on to learn all about the benefits of keeping your home clean. 

5 Ways Having a Clean House Benefits You

While we know the theoretical reasons why it’s important to have a clean house, what are the actual benefits of house cleaning?

  1. Physical activity
  2. Eating choices
  3. Sleep
  4. Health
  5. Productivity

1. Cleaning Benefits Your Body

Person Dust Mopping FloorAccording to a study by the Physical Activity Department of Indiana University, looking at the physical activity of 998 people aged between 49 and 65 years of age, those with clean houses seemed healthier and more active. In addition, the researchers determined that their physical activity could only be related to the cleanliness of their homes.

House cleaning requires movement and activity, which will benefit your body, much like exercise. Deep cleaning, when you spend more time cleaning appliances and other areas that aren’t cleaned in your regular cleaning schedule, burns even more calories. But even if you hire a cleaning service to clean your home, the results of the study still stand.

2. Better Chance of Eating Healthy in a Clean House

There are a couple of reasons your house cleaning may result in healthier eating choices. In a research article published in the Association for Psychological Science, the authors showed that physical order, such as a clean, orderly home, influenced healthy choices. When you can spot the oatmeal, you can make the oatmeal!

Secondly, researchers from Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab published a study in which participants snacked on twice the number of calories when standing in a messy kitchen than when they were in a clean one. It’s well-known that we tend to snack when stressed – why add the mess to our caloric temptations? Do a deep cleaning of your kitchen and remove any barriers to a healthy menu.

Additionally, we are likely to overeat when we are depressed, and house cleaning can often build up, adding to our list of overwhelming tasks. A messy kitchen is no fun to cook in, so people will avoid it and either go out to eat or order take-out. The average fast-food meal is an overwhelming 1,800 calories, whereas if you make dinner at home, it tends to come in at around 550. 

3. Better Sleeping With a Clean House

Woman Sleeping in Bright, Clean RoomAccording to experts, when the brain sees clutter, it interprets it as incomplete work. Therefore, it isn’t unexpected that it’s hard to wind down to sleep when surrounded by an untidy house! Add in our everyday stress and anxiety, and it’s a recipe for insomnia.

According to our good friends at the National Sleep Foundation, if you are in the habit of making your bed each morning, you have a 19% better chance of achieving better sleep. Your chances of better sleep rocket up to 75% if your bedding is fresh and laundered. A deep clean of your bedroom should lead you quickly to the land of Zzzzzs.

4. Prevent Infections and Illnesses by Keeping Your House Clean

Shockingly, the US Environmental Protection Agency alerted us that our indoor air quality in American homes can be two to five times, and can even be above 100 times, more contaminated than our outside air. How is this possible?

Pet dander, fluff, mold, dead bugs, and dust mites are inhaled by those that spend their time indoors. Therefore, allergy symptoms such as wheezing, runny nose, itchy eyes, and coughing might be alleviated simply by deep cleaning and attending to regularly scheduled house cleaning.

Additionally, little changes such as these will significantly improve allergy symptoms:

  • Removing shoes upon entering home
  • Regular vacuuming
  • Dusting with a moist cloth
  • Regularly changing bed linens
  • Cleaning window dressings
  • Cleaning bathrooms regularly

When house cleaning regularly, wash doorknobs, light switches, faucets, and other high-touch areas to prevent infectious diseases such as flu and viruses from spreading quickly between family members. If this seems more than you can cover, call in a professional cleaning service to tackle it for you.

5. Amplify Your Productivity in a Clean Home

Woman Works at Table with Laptops and CoffeeThe Princeton Neuroscience Institute on Interactions did a study on productivity and released findings that underscore that minds work better when there is less disorder. A clean home without all the clutter allows the mind to be more clearly focused and free to analyze information quickly. This allows for efficiency in any type of work.

How Does a Clean House Improve Your Mental Health?

We now know that a clean house is essential for us to stay healthy and work at our best, but is it valuable to us psychologically? In a study, it was found that women with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol lived in homes that were self-reported as cluttered or untidy. These women were also discovered to be more depressive and experienced higher levels of anxiety.

Increased stress and anxiety levels have been shown to be the result of clutter and mess. These often lead to poor sleep quality and weight gain. Additionally, too much stress can increase other health issues, such as the risk of heart disease and high blood pressure. If cortisol levels are at a continuously raised rate, it may result in a suppressed immune system and a lowered metabolism. House cleaning seems a small price to pay to avoid these health issues.

An unclean home can also be a symptom of depression, not just a result. Looking around a messy house only leads to a lack of focus and will not assist you in moving forward. 

House cleaning, whether deep cleaning, speed cleaning, or hiring a cleaning service, can help to alleviate all of this.

Can House Cleaning Improve Your Social Life?

Friends Having Coffee Inside a HomeAfter you’ve done the work of deep cleaning (or hired a cleaning service to do it for you!) and you are keeping up with the daily house cleaning, you can relax whenever a friend calls and asks to drop by. Likewise, there is no need to say “No” to an invitation to host or a casual get-together because your home will always be in visit-ready shape.

As you can see, house cleaning, whether deep cleaning or even speed cleaning, is vital to a happy and healthy home. So, call us and see how we can help you maintain that with our cleaning service. Pure House Cleaning serves communities in and around Seattle, Bellevue, and Kirkland, and we would love to help you keep your home looking and feeling its best with cleaning that fits your schedule and budget. Visit our website and learn more about our eco-friendly cleaning process, prices for cleaning in Seattle and other coverage areas, and more.