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After a long day at work, the last thing you may want to do to de-stress is to come home and clean the house. Many people associate cleaning more with drudgery than relaxation, for obvious reasons. However, there are several reasons why cleaning can be a great stress reliever.

Some of these reasons have to do with the process of cleaning, and some come from the end results of your efforts. This information may just make you want to start cleaning the next time you feel stressed.

Cleaning provides relief

If you come home and the house is a big mess then it can be a potential source of stress. Walking into a home that has piles of paper on every surface, stacks of laundry needing to be put away, and random items were thrown on the floor feels different than walking into a tidy home.

While most of us want that neat, ordered home environment, far too many of us live in a cluttered one that causes us stress. Very few of us live in a clutter-free home, and over a third live in surroundings so cluttered that they don’t even know where to begin cleaning. ​

Cleaning as a Money Saver

If you find yourself late on paying bills (because you can’t find them), replacing items you still have (because you don’t know where they are), and eating out more often than you need to (because your kitchen is too cluttered and messy for regular cooking), a little spring cleaning may actually save you money. You may not even realize the ways that a clean house can also be a money saver until you live in one.

Cleaning as an Exercise in Gratitude

Make cleaning a mindful task by taking the opportunity to be thankful for each thing you touch. For instance, if you are washing dishes, admire your plates, be grateful for the food that you’re scraping off since some have none, and admire the beauty of modern technology as you place that dish in the dishwasher.

By thinking about what you are cleaning you might find an extra appreciation that you didn’t realize you were lucky to have before. Because inner peace comes more from wanting what you have than from having what you want, unearthing the wonderful haven beneath the dirt and clutter can bring a new level of gratitude for all that you have.

Cleaning as Meditation 

While the end result of a major cleaning session — a beautiful and clean home — can be a great stress reliever, the act of cleaning your house can be a stress management technique. If you incorporate mindfulness into your cleaning, the work can actually be a form of meditation, leaving you more relaxed after you finish.

Cleaning as a Party

If you’re not one to get into a zen state as you clean, why not go in the other direction, and turn your cleaning experience into a mini party? Music has many wonderful stress relief benefits and playing music as you clean can make the activity much more enjoyable. Play your favorite music as you clean, and you may actually work faster and be done sooner.

Cleaning as Exercise

The act of cleaning done right, can bring the added benefit of getting you a little extra exercise, which can be great for relieving stress. Running up and down the stairs, carrying items from room to room, and scrubbing windows and floors can burn calories, release endorphins, and help you blow off steam. Spring cleaning is a workout routine that brings many benefits indeed.

Keeping your workplace clean and free from unsightly clutter is an important part of good management. Health hazards can quickly establish themselves in poorly maintained and unhygienic environments and you, and your employees, risk infection or contamination if you do not pay attention to best practice recommendations, whether in an office, on a building site or in a retail environment.

Poor workplace hygiene causes health and safety problems, particularly if attention is not paid to appropriate waste management and to keeping washrooms and kitchen areas spotlessly clean. In fact, employers are legally bound by the Health and Safety Act 1974 to ensure that their employees are looked after and that their safety and health is protected, as far as is reasonable and practical.

Know the requirements for workplace hygiene

For toilets and washing areas, you need to supply:

• Both hot and cold running water
• Soap for hand washing
• Towels for drying hands
• Toilet paper for toilet cubicles
• Regularly maintained and cleaned facilities

If your facilities include cold water that is not suitable for drinking, make sure you have appropriate signs in place for your employees.

Encourage personal hygiene

Your employees should be encouraged to practice their own personal hygiene. Display a polite notice asking them to contribute by cleaning facilities after use. If you use a contractor to undertake the cleaning of toilets and washrooms or kitchens and offices, you should be clear about the levels of cleanliness you require, how often cleaning should be done and when premises will be inspected. Remind employees that regular hand washing and the use of hand sanitisers are important, particularly after using washrooms, to help prevent the spread of illnesses.

Kitchen hygiene

Kitchens can be a health risk if high standards of cleanliness are not implemented. Any area used for the preparation of food or drinks should be kept scrupulously clean, as should appliances such as fridges, microwaves and toasters where these are used. Your checklist should include:

• All surfaces used for preparation of food, including chopping boards and utensils
• All appliances installed
• Cupboards where food and crockery is stored, inside and outside
• Windows, doors and floors

Remember that employees are entitled to complain if they believe lack of maintenance and poor cleaning of the kitchen area has created a health risk. Once again, it’s best to encourage employees to take some responsibility to protect them and to practice good hygiene.

Workstations

Personal work areas should be looked after by individual employees who share a space or by the sole occupant if workstations are not shared. A sensible hygiene policy will make sure everyone is aware of his or her responsibilities to remove clutter and properly dispose of waste, preferably via recycling it. Work surfaces can be cleaned with an appropriate solution to reduce the possibility of bacterial infection.

Employees who understand why it is important to have a hygienic workplace are much more likely to follow your policy guidelines for a clean and safe workplace environment.

Having a workspace usually means a lot of people, and a lot of foot traffic, so naturally you will want to keep it clean.

Carpet cleaning, carpet shampooing, hot water extraction, dry steam cleaning, dry compound cleaning, there are so many different names used for basically getting dirt out of your carpet, it’s easy to get confused about what they all mean. To make matters worse, these words are often used incorrectly, sometimes deliberately to mislead the customer, and some, shall we say, less reputable companies will take advantage if you use a generic term, such as steam cleaning. If you don’t specify hot water extraction cleaning, you might end up with a  carpet cleaning company simply using a steam mop on your floors, which will not produce the same results. If in doubt, ask for a precise description of how your carpet is going to be cleaned, so you know exactly what carpet cleaning method you are getting. There are several methods used for cleaning carpets, with the most popular being hot water extraction cleaning, as it gives the real deep clean to your carpet, getting rid of not just dirt but allergens, dust mites and more.

However, the best method of carpet cleaning also depends on the type of carpet to be cleaned. Most carpets benefit from the really thorough clean you get from hot water extraction, but it could spell disaster for carpets made from fibres such as sisal or jute. A jute carpet may look hard wearing, but the fibres are actually delicate, and should never be saturated, otherwise your carpet may never be the same again.

When the cleaner turned up for her night shift at an insurance company and snapped on the lights of the darkened main open-plan office, she stopped dead in her tracks.

And so did the man bent over a desk with his trousers around his ankles.

“I couldn’t work out what he was doing at first,” she says. “In my confusion, I even said something stupid like, ‘Good evening. You’re working late.’ But then I heard a woman’s voice, and realised he wasn’t alone.

“So I just turned the lights back off and backed out to the lifts and waited for them to sort themselves out. A few minutes later, they came out, called the lift and got into it. They didn’t even look at me.”

She didn’t think much more about it until she was waylaid by another staff member from the same firm a couple of weeks later. The woman told her the man – who’d been a manager – had been so nervous the cleaner would tell on him and his secretary that he’d confessed all to his boss, assuming the secretary would be moved on. He, instead, had been demoted and transferred.

“But he was silly to do that,” she says. “It’s part of our job description. What happens in the office stays in the office. Confidentiality is one of our most important things.”

Hiring just the right housekeeper can be life-altering for the busy family. Now this may seem to be a little over-the-top, but I am serious. Think about your life-whether single, a couple or a family-you have no time. No time to keep your home as organized or clean as you would like. No time to do the smaller tidying jobs that would make a huge difference.

“I am still learning about my home. If you can’t do it yourself, find good service people and treat them well.” — Terry (mom to our Human Resources Coordinator, Louisa)

Hiring just the right housekeeper can be life-altering for the busy family. Now this may seem to be a little over-the-top, but I am serious. Think about your life-whether single, a couple or a family-you have no time. No time to keep your home as organized or clean as you would like. No time to do the smaller tidying jobs that would make a huge difference.

Do you ever casually go about your day, popping into the kitchen for a little peanut butter toast and then the next thing you know you’re turning over the toaster oven because it’s been so long and you just can’t take the crumbs anymore?

At the risk of sounding like a cloyingly optimistic Peppy Patty (which I can assure you, I am not), I never really understood all the pervasive hate for Mondays. I get that easing yourself from the freedom of the weekend into the structure of the workweek is a bit of a shock to the system…