Mindfully Spring Clean Your Space
At the Imbolc sharing circle we spoke about how this is the time for having a nice spring clean and inviting new energy to come into your life. It ties in with positive psychology practices because keeping your home clean and tidy is good for your physical and mental wellbeing!
In the early 20th century, Swiss theorist and psychiatrist Carl Jung proposed that the home is powerfully symbolic—and psychologically significant. Far more than shelter from the outside, our homes are a reflection of ourselves, our identity, he argued. How we construct this space is, therefore, closely connected to our inner narrative and mental state of mind.
A large body of modern research supports this idea, laying the foundation for environmental psychology, or the study of how the built environment influences our mood and behaviours. Surprisingly, everything from how you arrange your sofa to how much sunlight filters through your rooms can have an impact on your emotional and physical health, whether you’re aware of it or not.
A 2010 study by researchers at the University of California used software to analyse how 30 cohabiting couples talked about their homes. Those describing their living spaces as “cluttered” or complained of “unfinished projects” were more likely to be suffering from depression and fatigue than those who described their homes as “restful” and “restorative.” It was also found that those living in cluttered environments displayed higher levels of cortisol, a hormone that’s released into a person’s blood from their adrenal gland, often in response to stress.
In their 2011 study, researchers at Princeton University concluded that a cluttered environment makes it more difficult to focus on a specific task due to a person’s visual cortex being overwhelmed by all the task-irrelevant objects in the room.
A 2014 study published in the journal Mindfulness found that participants who took part in ‘mindfully’ washing the dishes reported a 27% reduction in nervousness, along with a 25% improvement in ‘mental inspiration’. Mindfully washing the dishes means to do so contemplatively, by inhaling the scent of the dishwashing liquid and enjoying the sensation of warm water on your hands.
So it’s worth considering how you go about cleaning your home, as different approaches may lead to different outcomes. A more energetic clean may be more beneficial to your physical health, while a meditative approach could benefit your mental wellbeing.
Today’s Practice is to Spring Clean Your Space
1) Assess what is needed & make a plan
First, honestly assess what you like and don’t like about your space. Make a specific, actionable plan to tackle the problem areas, which can save your sanity. Plan a time you can do your Spring clean that feels doable (an hour a day before work, or blitzing through on a Sunday) that works for you.
2) Duclutter and tidy
Mess can really, well, mess with your psyche. Why? Seeing piles of stuff everywhere overstimulates your brain, making it work harder and draining your resources. Clutter is a nagging visual cue of all the things you have to do, which taxes your stress response system.
To control the jumble, deal with items quickly in the moment—hang up coats, keep or chuck school papers, put laundry in drawers—rather than let things accumulate until the end of the day (or week, month…). There’s also nothing wrong with visually hiding clutter that can’t be totally eliminated.
3) Deep Clean
The difference between tidying round and a spring clean is the depth of the clean, we are taking moving the sofa out to hoover underneath, cleaning the bed sheets, deep cleaning the bathrooms. The worst thing about this type of project is the level of overwhelm it can create. If it feels like too big a task, we may feel like it’s not doable and then procrastinate and put it off.
But we can tap into postive psychology to help with this - either delegate it, or break it down into easy manageable tasks. If you have the funds it may be worth hiring a cleaner to help with this as a one off deep clean. If you don’t have money to assign to that, but live with other people, see fi you can get them on board to help and divide the jobs up, trying to give each person the ones they enjoy the most however possible. If neither of those options are available, chunk it down into small, un-intimidating jobs and just do one a day until your spade feels spring fresh.
4) Clean the energy
Open the windows and the doors to allow for old energy to leave and then go around and smudge your space with sage or palo santo to cleanse your space energetically. Spiritually they have been used to cleanse spaces energetically, but sage and palo santo has been scientifically proven to clear bacteria in the air.
Smudging smoke offers rapid delivery to the brain and efficient absorption to the body. Scientists have observed that sage can clear up to 94 percent of airborne bacteria in a space and disinfect the air. When sage or palo santo is burned, it releases negative ions, which is linked to putting people into a positive mood. The Latin word for sage salvia stems form the word heal. Other qualities believed to be associated with sage when burned are giving wisdom, clarity, and increasing spiritual awareness.
