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Cleanliness Is Next To Healthiness: Six Health Benefits Of A Clean Home

What’s one simple step you can take today to improve your health? You might think of things like walking to work, eating less sugar or sleeping more. However, the answer is even easier: just clean your house! So, how can one simple change make such a big difference for your health?

It turns out that a clean home has unexpected positive effects on many aspects of your life. One study has even found a correlation between the neatness of a person’s home and their level of fitness. Read on to learn about the six key health benefits you will experience from tidying up more often.

Make Your Home Safer

A clean home is a safe home. Clutter increases the risk of falls and accidents, which is especially dangerous for the elderly. If you have children or pets, small items left lying around can present a choking hazard. Young children can also strangle or suffocate from items like ribbons and plastic bags.

An unkept home easily becomes a death trap during an emergency, such as a fire or earthquake. Excessive clutter can impede your escape and prevent emergency responders from reaching you. The same mess that is easy to navigate around during normal conditions may be impassable when your home is filled with smoke.

Reduce Allergy and Asthma Symptoms

If you or anyone in your home suffers from allergies or asthma, it’s even more important to keep your home clean. A pile of household dust is enough to send some asthmatics to the hospital, but even those with mild symptoms will experience a great improvement with a cleaner environment.

However, cleaning can be a little trickier for people who have allergies or asthma because common cleaning chemicals can also trigger symptoms. This handy guide from Allergic Living explains how to choose the right products and techniques to remove dust, dirt and hair without introducing more allergens.

Take Fewer Sick Days

Many hours of productivity are lost each year to illnesses like colds, flus and stomach viruses. The germs that spread these illnesses often lurk on household objects like doorknobs and remote controls. You can significantly reduce the amount of missed days from work and school just by keeping these surfaces disinfected.

While you might think that the bathroom is the dirtiest room in your home, it’s actually the kitchen. Many of the germs and bacteria lurking in your kitchen come from improperly-handled foods. In fact, the stomach bug that forced you to call in sick may have been easily-preventable food poisoning.

A video report from CNN explains the different sources of germs in the kitchen. As you can see, food preparation is not the only culprit. When you leave your purse on the counter or your child tosses his backpack onto the table, bacteria and viruses get left behind.

Store germ-laden items like bags and cell phones away from the kitchen and always wipe down surfaces before preparing or serving food on them.

Keep Pests Away

Pests like mice, rats and cockroaches are another source of disease-causing germs in your home. No one likes to share their space with these creepy-crawlies, but did you know that keeping your home in order can make it less attractive to them? If you’re dealing with an infestation, put away the traps and poisons and try cleaning first.

Pests like clutter and mess because it provides them with places to hide and a source of food. Keep all food items stored in air-tight containers or in the refrigerator to prevent bugs and rodents from accessing them. Don’t leave papers, boxes or clothes lying around on the floor because these things make great nests for pests.

Most importantly, remember to throw trash away immediately and consider using a trash can with a lid. Keeping organic waste like vegetable and fruit peels in the freezer until trash pick-up day can also deter pests and reduce garbage smells.

Burn More Calories

Housework burns more calories than you think. Only two hours of housework can burn off around 400 calories, which translates to a weight loss of six pounds in a year. For example, sweeping burns 136 calories in half an hour, cleaning windows burns 167 calories and deep-cleaning a bathtub or shower burns 90 calories in only 15 minutes.

Increase your calorie burn and build muscle mass by wearing wrist or ankle weights while you clean. Picking up the pace can also burn more calories while getting the work done faster. Counting calories? A fitness tracker can help you keep track of how many you burn while doing housework.

Decrease Stress

Stress is associated with negative health consequences like elevated blood pressure, disrupted sleep and weight gain. Your home should be an oasis away from the stresses of life, not another cause of anxiety, but a disorganized home can add as much stress to your life as that big project at work.

Being surrounded by a messy environment increases cortisol, your body’s stress hormone, in a number of ways. For example, frustration can result when you need something and can’t find it, while feelings of shame or embarrassment can rise up when family and friends visit your dirty abode.

From fewer falls and sick days to increased calorie burn and reduced stress, keeping your home clean is a lifestyle change that results in a large amount of benefits for little effort. If cleaning and organizing your entire home seems like an insurmountable task, remember that you don’t have to do it all at once.

Start by making a list of everything that needs done to get your home back into shape and tackle one room at a time. Once your home is mess-free, keep it that way by cleaning as you go and tidying up a little each day, or call Up Maids Cleaning Services in Sunrise.