I Don't Believe in Spring Cleaning and Here's Why

It’s that time of year again; when the weather warms up and we are finally willing to take on the huge task of purging our environment and re-establishing order in our domain. Spring cleaning can seem daunting, and it should! In all honesty, I’m not sure who decided that this was a thing but I’ve always found the notion of Spring Cleaning quite silly. After all, why should we only focus on our environments once a year? Instead of giving you advice on how to spend an entire week going through your house and organizing it (only for reality to set in and ruin it all within a week), I’m going to provide some long-term, habitual practices you can implement to maintain an orderly environment ALL. YEAR. LONG.

I’ve discussed the importance and impact of our environment on our mental health before, but just to review some quick facts:

Studies show that there is a higher level of cortisol (the stress hormone) in the brains of people who live in cluttered environments. A study conducted by Princeton University showed that clutter actually impedes focus and concentration as clutter overwhelms your visual cortex and impedes your ability to focus and complete tasks efficiently. A quote from the study says: “To the brain, clutter represents unfinished business and this lack of completeness can be highly stressful for some people. This fact is especially true when people have (other) significant concerns pressing in on their lives.”

Essentially, if you are going through ANYTHING in life (which we all are after this whirlwind of a year) having a cluttered and messy home is actually more detrimental to your mental health than you could potentially realize. So, how do you combat this? Well surprisingly, the answer is not by performing mass cleaning exercises (*couch* spring cleaning *cough*). The answer actually lies within your own behavior and unconscious habits.

For example, say that it’s a weeknight after work and you are lounging on the couch. At some point you get bored, so you grab the remote and turn on the TV and then you grab a blanket because you’re cold. Then, you grab your charger for your phone and plug it in, and then say that you pass out on the couch. In the middle of the night, you wake up and retreat to your bed. At the moment it seems like a perfectly normal decision, it’s late, you’re tired and the “things” can wait, right? So the next morning you wake up and get ready for work and you’re in a decent mood, but then you walk out into your living room and see the clutter. Whether you realize it or not, it sends a negative message to your brain immediately triggering anxiety and stress. This is especially true for women who have essentially been raised to feel judged on every aspect of their personality, including how clean their home is. You shrug and resolve to deal with it when you get home from work. The rest of the day at work, you are distracted thinking about your home, so much so that by the time you get home you are too anxious to actually clean, and suddenly that “clutter” seems very inviting. Why not just sit down with a blanket and lounge? You know you have things you wanted to accomplish, but this is just so comforting.

Okay, so you may be thinking to yourself: wow she took a blanket and remote and turned it into a whole thing. Actually, I didn’t. Your brain did. This is the simple science of habit formation. Your brain is hardwired to find the quickest path from point A to point B (and point B is something that makes you feel safe and comforted or that you enjoy the sensation of). What happens in between point A and B is that your brain starts finding shortcuts to get there faster and faster. If you walk into your bedroom and see an unmade bed, your brain instinctually jumps to “wow it would feel so amazing to lay down right now” and if you lay down once your brain will continually look for ways to make that process happen automatically (see: unconsciously). So though you may come home from work and have the desire to complete other tasks, your brain is already searching for that dopamine hit you get from laying down.

So, how do you hardwire this process in your favor? Well, step one is awareness, and it’s uncomfortable. Charles Duhig writes in The Power of Habit: “Change might not be fast and it isn't always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.” Here’s a real-life example:

We’ll use the same scenario as earlier, except when you wake up from the couch you have a habit in place to “reset” the room. By the way, this is my first organization tip; if you can implement one thing that will make such a huge difference in the organization of your home at all times, it’s this tip. So say you wake up on the couch and instead of going to bed, you take a moment to fold up the blanket and return it to the original position, same with the remote. You grab your charger on the way to bed and put everything back in its original place. You wake up, get ready for work and walk out to see a perfectly organized living room. There is nothing in the back of your head while you’re at work, you are able to focus and complete your work and still have energy when you get home (to a still clean and orderly house) which means you still have the energy to pursue your own personal interests after work.

We often don't realize that unconscious habits are often at the core of creating the environment we live in every day. It is by no means easy to rewire this habit system, but in my personal experience and opinion, it is well worth it for the peace of mind you get in return. Here are some other simple habit changes that will help you maintain an orderly space all year round:

1. Reset the room: Whenever you are done using a space reset it to its original condition before you leave the room. This will become an automatic practice eventually and you won’t even realize that you are doing it.

2. Pick-up bins: This tip goes out to moms specifically because we know how things love to travel across the entire house. Place empty bins near the entry in every room. Throughout the week perform 10 minute “quick cleaning” sessions in each room and collect anything that doesn’t belong in the room in the bin. When you have extra time or on the weekend, grab the bin and redistribute the items to their appropriate place.

3. Closet clean-up: Do you have skeletons in your closet? And by skeletons I don’t mean dead ex-boyfriends, I mean things that you literally haven’t touched in 5 plus years? If so, it’s time to practice letting go. In my experience working with clients, closets are some of the messiest, most disorganized areas in a home. Go through your closets once a month and if you don’t need them in your house, get it out! I understand if you have limited storage such as in an apartment, but even then I’ve found that a lot of times people carry items with them even if they no longer have a use or need for them. We have this “just in case” mentality, but if you haven’t used it in the last 5 years, you probably aren’t going to use it any time soon.

4. Make your bed. Yes, you read that right. It may not seem like a big deal, but trust me it makes a world of difference. A researcher at Duke University conducted a study in 2006 found that 40% of the decisions we make as humans are not “well-informed” decisions, but rather habits in action. You may remember the infamous speech by Navy Seal William H. McCraven that circulated on every social media platform in which he said “If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed.” I don’t think I can say it much better than that. I’ve implemented this in my own personal life and it makes such a HUGE difference, so just trust us. Try it for yourself.

Whether we realize it or not, habits are at the center of almost everything we do, including how clean and organized our physical environment is. If making a lot of changes at once seems daunting to you (as it often does), start off implementing just one of these tips and see the effect that it has on your mood and productivity. If you are looking for tips on rewiring your habit cycle, Atomic Habits by James Clear outlines an easy-to-follow process for optimizing your environment and your habits to work together. I’ve slowly been implementing these habits in my own home and have certainly noticed a difference in the organization, but most importantly I’ve noticed a difference in my sanity. As women, we often juggle so many different roles, and having any one thing that pretty much takes care of itself is such a blessing.

Happy cleaning friends! (And for the love of God, please don’t do it all at once).