For most people, cleaning is a necessary evil. But some people actually enjoy cleaning so much that it becomes their hobby. They spend all their spare time cleaning everything in their path.
Cleaning as a hobby can make significant improvements in mental and physical health. Anxiety and stress are reduced by a clean environment. Symptoms of depression are sometimes relieved by cleaning.
Cleaning as a form of recreation is a foreign concept to most people. But for those who enjoy it, nothing is quite so relaxing. Read on to learn why someone might fall in love with cleaning.
Cleaning As A Hobby
To enjoy cleaning is not inherently a bad thing. After all, if you’ve got to do it anyway, you may as well have fun, right?
Most people who love their home will experience a sense of deep satisfaction from cleaning it.
Cleaning can be a great form of exercise, especially if you deep clean a large area. Bending and twisting to clean hard-to-reach places are nearly as effective as a Zumba workout. You can work up quite a sweat just doing routine cleaning.
Cleaning goes beyond obligatory and becomes a hobby when you clean more than is strictly necessary. Cleaning as a hobby means you do more than routine cleaning or you do routine cleaning more often than usual.
For example, cleaning closets twice a year is considered normal, but cleaning closets once a month may be considered a hobby.
There are any number of reasons why people might clean more often than what is considered normal.
These reasons may include:
- Boredom
- Anxiety
- Perfectionism
- Nurture
These reasons do not mean that the cleaning hobbyist needs an intervention. In extreme cases, some of these reasons may need to be examined and dealt with. But if cleaning is a hobby and not an obsession, there is no imminent danger to the cleaner.
Boredom Is Relieved By Cleaning
Believe it or not, some people clean because they are bored. This can be especially true of retirees who have spent years turning out high volumes of work.
Now they suddenly find themselves with nothing to do. People inherently need to feel productive, so the recently retired person may turn to cleaning just to feel that they are contributing something.
The empty-nest mom may spend hours cleaning just to mask the quietness of a house without children or teenagers. It helps to fill the hours that were once spent driving children to soccer matches and baseball practices. And in these cases, cleaning does much good and no harm, so there is no cause for concern.
Anxiety Sometimes Motivates Hobby Cleaning
A more harmful motivator of hobby cleaning is anxiety. Some people have what the old-timers described as a “nervous energy”.
These people are high-strung and find it impossible to sit still for more than a few seconds. Their anxiety demands that they do something constantly.
They may be anxious about:
- An upcoming test
- A medical procedure
- An impending life change
It is possible that the so-called “nesting syndrome” associated with expectant mothers may be rooted in anxiety about the imminent birth.
While some anxiety is a normal part of life, it can quickly get out of hand, making you and everybody around you miserable.
If you find yourself needing to be constantly moving, evaluate your true feelings to see if your cleaning urge is the result of deep-seated anxiety.
Perfectionism Can Drive Hobby Cleaning
Another reason for cleaning as a hobby is a sense of needing everything to be perfect. Social media has helped to fuel this need with pictures of spotless, perfectly organized rooms.
This makes the average person feel that their house is a dump because it is less than pristine.
While you absolutely should keep your house clean for health’s sake, you shouldn’t become so fixated on an immaculate house that your family doesn’t feel at home there anymore.
There really is no such thing as perfect. We all do the best we can to keep our homes from looking like a disaster area, but “perfect” doesn’t exist.
So, clean if you wish, but remember, it’s more important that family and friends feel comfortable at your house than that you earn a page in Better Homes and Gardens.
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Nurture
A powerful factor in the way one views cleaning is their upbringing. If your parents were fanatical about cleanliness, you are likely to follow in their footsteps.
Conversely, if your parents were unorganized and chaotic in their approach to life, you may insist on a high level of cleanliness to combat the confusing effects of your chaotic childhood.
Some people are neat by nature and cannot tolerate helter-skelter lifestyles. Those who were brought up by neat-freak parents are likely to clean more than the average person because you never forget childhood lessons.
Why Do I Love Cleaning?
Cleaning does have a certain charm to it. Something about cleaning your environment makes you feel at peace with the world.
In unstable circumstances, it may be the one thing you can control, so it may give you a sense of security to clean.
Cleaning Is A Safe Vent for Emotions
Emotions are powerful motivators that must have safety release valves. Cleaning can provide that release in a way that minimizes damage.
It is socially unacceptable to bash somebody’s face because they annoyed you. But nobody minds if you thrash your rugs.
It is not excusable to give your spouse a tongue-lashing for doing something stupid, but you’re welcome to scrub every appliance you own within an inch of its life.
Whether you’re hilariously happy or red-eyed mad, you can safely vent your feelings in an elbow-deep clean.
Cleaning Provides Distraction from Troubled Thoughts
If you’re an overthinker, cleaning can help you get your mind “unstuck” from troublesome thoughts.
Losing yourself in a good “spring” cleaning is an excellent way to give your brain a rest from whatever you have been agonizing over.
If nothing else, it will tire you out until you don’t have the energy to think. In this way, cleaning can help to relieve symptoms of depression by distracting you from depressing thoughts.
Also, a messy environment does much to exacerbate depression. Clutter and chaos are difficult for the brain to process.
Just cleaning ad organizing your house can help you feel less depressed because your brain less stimulated.
Cleaning Helps To Prioritize Tasks
When your surroundings are a mess, it’s hard to decide what should be done first. While chaos may inspire creativity, it doesn’t do much for motivation.
Cleaning helps you see more clearly what needs to be done now and what can wait. It’s almost as if clearing the clutter also clears your brain from overload.
You feel more in control of things when order reigns. Many tasks needing to be done at once confuses and overwhelms you until it seems impossible to get everything done.
Once the house is in order, everything seems a little easier to tackle. Now you can divide and conquer based on importance of task.
Your thoughts are more easily organized when your immediate environs are organized.
Cleaning as A Hobby Can Put You In High Demand
For every person who loves to clean, there are two people who abhor cleaning. If you just can’t get enough of cleaning, you probably have friends or neighbors who would be happy to support your hobby.
Why not do what you love and make some extra money at the same time? A cleaning hobby can make you the favorite person on your street.
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