After a winter full of clouds, rain and cold weather, spring has finally (somewhat later than usual) come to Adelaide! Spring Cleaning is the perfect time to breath new life and cleanliness into your Adelaide home. Many people in Adelaide and around the world clean their houses in spring, but have you ever wondered why and what the benefits are? Here are the best 7 reasons why spring is the perfect time to clean your home:

Better Breathing, Reduce Allergies & Asthma

Many people in Adelaide suffer from allergies or asthma, and these conditions may often appear exacerbated in spring. You may think it is due to pollen, however pollen is often not the only culprit; according to Dr Jennifer McDonnell, many breathing difficulties result from dust particles, pet dander and other dry particulate that is present in the home.

Carpets and rugs in your Adelaide home function as a filter by trapping airborne particles to support healthy breathing, but if they are not cleaned and the allergens allowed to build up, walking on the carpets will cause them to re-enter your home’s airspace and degrade your indoor air quality. Having your carpets cleaned as part of your spring cleaning by professional Adelaide carpet cleaners using High Efficiency Particulate Arresting vacuum cleaners helps to reduce the impact of allergies and asthma on your family’s health by improving the air quality inside your home.

Furniture, particularly fabric upholstery such as lounge sofas can also be a haven for dust particles, pet dander, dust mites and other allergy inducing nasties. Vacuuming your fabric upholstery as part of your spring cleaning is an excellent practice to freshen up your lounge sofa at the same time as everything else. Lounge sofas should be professionally cleaned and protected every 24 months for ideal health and hygiene, particularly when pets are kept indoors. Our upholstery cleaning Adelaide service always vacuums your fabric sofas with a hospital-grade vacuum cleaner to extract microscopic dust particles that would otherwise be recirculated into the air.

Improve Mental Health

Due to the lack of sunlight, Seasonal Affective Disorder also known as winter depression can affect anywhere from 1-10% of the population depending on environmental conditions, even in a place like Adelaide which gets a good amount of sun. Having a cluttered or unclean house has also been linked to depression, stress, anxiety and other negative mental health outcomes.

If suffering from the winter blues, spring cleaning can be just the thing to pull you out of the mental rut! Studies in the United Kingdom have found that 57% of people gain a sense of satisfaction from cleaning and that strenuous cleaning for 20 minutes has positive mental health outcomes for depression, stress and anxiety. If you’re still stuck in the winter blues, work up a sweat cleaning your house and see how you feel – if nothing else, at least you’ll have a clean house in Adelaide 🙂

Get Physically Active

During winter our bodies generate more sleep hormones as there is less sunlight during the day, making us sleepier and more lethargic; we can slump into an Adelaide winter hibernation, with the winter gloom and stagnated energy often making us neglect physical exercise as well as our household maintenance. Spring cleaning in Adelaide is a perfect time to work up a sweat and get physically active again, at the same time as cleaning your home!

A research study from the USA has found a surprising correlation between having a clean house and being in a healthy physical condition; burning calories is partly an explanation but scientists believe this correlation is also related to self-regulation, the ability to act in accordance to one’s goals regardless of one’s current emotional state or circumstances. Getting your house clean and keeping it that way has both mental and physical positive outcomes!

Increase Productivity

In a 2011 Workspace Organisation Study from America, 90% of people found that unorganised clutter at home or work has a negative impact on their life, 77% reported it negatively impacted their productivity and 53% reported it impacted upon their motivation. In contrast once the participants had de-cluttered and cleaned their environment, 71% reported feeling accomplished, 54% reported feeling more confident and 52% had increased motivation! Spring cleaning your home and work environment in Adelaide will help you be more productive at whatever you apply yourself to, and improve your physical and emotional well-being!

Better Sleep

Spring is often the time to switch over the winter quilts and bedding in preparation for the warmer temperatures to come. Apart from the negative mental health outcomes of unclean, cluttered environments which can affect your sleep quality, a study by the National Sleep Foundation found that people who make their beds every day when they wake up report consistently better sleep, and that 75% of respondents reported improved sleeping conditions on clean sheets & bedding. Make the switch to your spring bedding at the same time as your Adelaide spring cleaning and your sleep will thank you for it! This would also be an ideal time to get your mattress cleaned; mattresses should be professionally cleaned every couple of years for health and hygiene and our Adelaide mattress cleaning service is happy to help!

Cleaner Diet

Amazingly researchers from the University of Minnesota observed that in a 2013 research study, people placed in a clean, orderly room were more likely to choose healthy eating options as compared to people placed in a disorderly room. In Adelaide winter can be a dark and gloomy time that is mostly spent indoors, and often we can stack on a few extra kilograms from lack of exercise. Spring cleaning is a perfect way to burn some calories while subconsciously helping ourselves to make cleaner, healthier food choices!

Tradition

Australia is a young country but did you know that many of the oldest cultures still existing today across a wide variety of geographical locations, cultural practices and religious beliefs, have all historically cleaned their houses in the spring?

When preparing for Chinese New Year, Chinese people traditionally clean every inch of the house, throwing out broken items and de-cluttering as they go. Once the cleaning is complete, they hang paper couplets (called ‘chunlian’) around the entrance to their home as a good luck charm for the new year.

Jewish tradition holds that before Passover, the Jewish people would remove all leavened products from the home then thoroughly clean every part of their home to remove any trace of leavened goods. Some scholars hold that this the origin of the practice of spring cleaning.

In Greece and other Eastern Orthodox nations, all homes are traditionally cleaned before or during the first week of Great Lent, known as “Clean Week”, while Catholic tradition holds that the first part of Holy Week is time for the most vigorous cleaning of the house, and that the entire family should be involved!

Get To Spring Cleaning!

As we’ve seen spring cleaning in Adelaide provides many mental and physical advantages, gets your home ready for hosting in the beautiful weather to come, and it’s been practised for thousands of years by some of the oldest cultures still in existence today. Time to get cleaning!