Sometimes I feel like things are really a mess. I don't know what the next step is or - on the hardest days - what steps are possible. On those days, I try to clear my mind and gain a little bit of control by clearing my desk off.
Here are a couple of articles linking cleanliness to mental health and stress relief.
- The Connection Between Cleanliness and Mental Health
- I like this article because it talks about how cleaning sparks that feeling of control over your environment. It also gave a really good tip on setting a timer so that you don’t lose yourself into cleaning for hours and then feel stressed that you
lost
time. Cleaning is always time well spent in my opinion. - The Mental Health Benefits Of A Clean Home
- This article is shorter than the last and breaks it down into two sets of bullet points that you can use.
- Cleaning for Mental Health
- This article from the Cleaning Institute is a pretty good one in that it also has links on how to clean. I know that I sometimes don’t know how to get started. Don’t let the idea that you can’t clean it perfectly stop you from doing any cleaning.
For me, I stopped at after cleaning up the desk area and was able to focus a little bit better that day.
