Why do we clean?

Last year, I finally cleaned out and organized my home office and craft space. Getting everything put into place and cleaned up gave me the most incredible sense of peace, and made it so much more enjoyable to work in that space.

I’ve had a lot of fun reading the clean freak confessions over in the right-hand column. There have been great tips, funny anecdotes, and some interesting insight into why we clean. I’ve realized that our motivation for cleaning tends to fall into one or more of the following categories:

Health Concerns
As a parent of two young children, germs are a constant concern - especially in the fall and winter months. It seems that one or both of them is always getting sick, full blown sick, or just getting over being sick. It’s a constant battle against the germs around here. It’s the one area of their lives where we don’t encourage sharing. Several people have confessed to being “germaphobes” and to keeping bottles of hand sanitizer scattered about their homes and offices. Fear of getting sick or spreading sickness is a major motivation for cleaning.

Feeling of Obligation
Maybe it’s the voice of one of our parents in our head, or perhaps it’s a feeling tied to being a stay at home or work at home parent, or maybe there is some unspoken societal standard for how our homes and offices should look, but a feeling of obligation is often what pushes us to clean. I feel a huge amount of guilt and embarrassment when my house now isn’t as clean as the house in which I grew up, even though my mom genuinely doesn’t care and goes out of her way to let me know it’s not a big deal. But still - that nagging voice in my head when I see dirty dishes in the sink or laundry piling up is often what gives me the final push to get off the computer and start cleaning.

A Need For a Sense of Peace
This is the category from which I strive to have my motivation come. Every time we have a big family clean up day in our house, we all sit back and say, “Wow! This place is really beautiful and is so cozy and relaxing!” To me, that is the best reason of all to clean: to get a sense of accomplishment and peace. When I walk into my house and it’s a mess, my skin literally crawls and my neck tenses up. Because I work at home, if my house is messy it hangs over my head all day as I try to work. Conversely, when my home is cleaned and picked up, I feel an incredible sense of peace and happiness. I feel comfortable and happy to be at home. I feel exactly the way I want to feel, and that feeling is worth the time of picking up countless pairs of my kids shoes and washing load after load of laundry.

So why do you clean? What is your motivation for choosing to clean over any of your other obligations or hobbies? Share them in the comments!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Indoor Cleaning, Kid Clean Up, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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